Special Gifts

Lori Levy

 

By Sharon Waller Knutson

To celebrate Passover and Lori Levy’s 70^th birthday on April 22, I am publishing poems from her new book, "Feet in L.A., But My Womb Lives in Jerusalem, My Breath in Vermont" which was published by Ben Yehuda Press in 2023 as part of the Jewish Poetry Project.

 I'm not always sure where "home" is, and that's sort of the theme behind the poems in my book, "Feet in L.A., But My Womb Lives in Jerusalem, My Breath in Vermont." Lori writes.

“I grew up in Vermont, so that's my childhood home. I live with my extended family in Los Angeles, so that's my home now. But I also lived a total of 16 years in Israel, and that's where I met my husband and our three kids were born. My mother lives there (my father died two years ago), and my sisters and their families live there. I also have good friends there, so Israel has a big place in my heart and still feels like home.

  “I'm not religious, but Israel is important to me. That's why I wrote these poems. I submitted the chapbook to Ben Yehuda Press because I knew they publish Jewish-themed books.” 

 On Amazon, the book is described as:

 What more could I ask for than a chair at your bright yellow table, high as clear skies, pine trees, and the dusty red roofs of Jerusalem.

Lori Levy's delicate poems oscillate vividly between the sensation of dayenu-moments, when we feel perfectly whole and at peace -and our craving to experience more: more of this life, again, more of this place, or another place, of another moment. Levy merges nostalgia and carpe diem as she recalls important stations of her journeys between Vermont, Israel, and California. To love means to know well: a person, a place, a specific shade of light at a precise hour of the day, the taste of her mother-in-law's kubeh dish. As we follow Levy's memories of her longings, joys, and loves we are reminded of how we can find permanence in every impermanent moment, savored in the present.

My favorite poems from the book:

 WHERE IS HOME?

I belong to the movers, the ones who don’t stay put.
We have dug up our roots and planted them elsewhere
again and again.  Now a question clings to me,
like a toddler at my sleeve, pulling for an answer;
the asking never stops.

I could give you my address, point to a house
behind a gate on a boulevard in Los Angeles.
But sometimes only my feet live here;
the top of me leans from a third floor balcony
for a glimpse of sea past clotheslines and geraniums,
heart beating to the screech of Tel Aviv.

Or maybe I should say
one foot lives here, the other over there;
I straddle the earth, legs spread wide.  Some days
I click my heels together and land in Vermont,
ground of my childhood.  

My breath lives in Vermont:  steam in the air
on a cold winter day.  My back is there, too,
imprinted in the snow, arms making wings.
But my womb is in Jerusalem where my kids were born,
and my vagina resides here with my husband in L.A.
I swirl olive oil on a plate of hummus.
It tastes like Mordechai Ben Hillel Street, corner of King George.
I spread some on pita for my hungry grandson,
and home becomes the reaching between big hands and
little hands this moment, this day.


I FLY TO ISRAEL FOR MY MOTHER’S 84TH BIRTHDAY

We celebrate in the hills.  My sisters spread blankets
on a grassy slope in the Forest of Angels,
Ya’ar Hamalakhim, and there, under pines and oaks—
our parents on beach chairs that seem to float away
in a sea of wildflowers—we feast on the lunch they’ve laid out
on a table in the clearing:  lasagna and quiche,
schnitzel, potatoes, salads, fresh peppers.
No balloons at this party, but we have bright red
anemones, clusters of pink columbine, white-pink asphodel,
tangles of mustard weed, yellow and green,
and down below, in the valley, the woolly backs of sheep
that a Bedouin has brought to graze on the tall grass,
their maaing and baaing blending with the Arabic music
blaring from a radio nearby, where a group of men,
hands on each other’s shoulders, bodies linked,
kick their legs, slide this way and that way,
marking the beat that echoes through the trees—
while we chatter and laugh, our parents surrounded
by their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren,
and I think:  this is what I want, too,
a birthday party outdoors when I’m 84,
no walls around me, just a spot with a view,
sun warming my wrinkled cheek
while I gaze with pleasure at the family we’ve created
my husband at my side, details beginning to blur perhaps—
but what will that matter if I can have a moment
of lasagna in the woods, cake and wildflowers and a birthday song
filled with the moaning of sheep and squeals of revelry
and, clear and emphatic, ever-present in my ears
my mother’s voice, reminding me
once again that it’s important to laugh,
at ourselves, our lives. 

FOUR WOMEN FLOATING

I can’t say why
why, at forty-six, it was such a thrill
sneaking into the kibbutz pool one night—
four women swimming laps under the moon,
the water still warm from the desert sun.
Breathing in, breathing out; just us
in the silence of orange trees and lemons,
potato fields fading into sand dunes and wadis,
acacias with long brown pods.
I can’t say what made us spring,
weightless as ballerinas, across the pool,
bouncing off the balls of our feet,
gushing laughter into the soft dark air—
or why, as peacocks hurled cries of anguish
over the fence in the petting farm,
we lined up side by side,
holding the edge, pedaling with our legs,
and became four mothers merging
like sky into water,
sharing our stories,
letting go of our pain.
 

TORAH IN THE FIELDS

Not you, but your question
has flown with me to Israel.

What makes it a Bar Mitzvah?
There’s no rabbi, no synagogue, no Torah.
I see your point, Mother-in-law.
And now I also see poppies.
Yes, the poppies are out.
Mazal Tov!  Mazal Tov!  they call to my nephew
when we pass them on the trail in northern Galilee.
They are swaying, nodding,
deep in prayer and celebration.
Time to break out and bloom;
vibrant, red, they applaud thirteen.

The cows have come, too.  Like rabbis,
they show us the way.  They are everywhere:
on the hills, in the caves, the streams.
They leave warnings on the trail:  where not to step.
This way, they say, higher and higher up the cliffs of Arbel,
and my nephew follows.  The Kinneret shines below,
and in the water, his reflection:  boy becoming man.

Later, in Ein Karem, we bless him in a garden
where grapes were once pressed into wine.
The steaks on the barbecue know this is a Bar Mitzvah.
They conspire with the stones in the courtyard,
the arches, the peeling walls, beautiful as frescoes;
with the lemons and the grapevine, the pink flowers of the redbud.
All of them whispering about the mitzvahs of this boy
whom we have gathered to honor
around a table bursting with fresh and tender and  
sweet on a sunny day in Jerusalem.

WHEN I’M OLD AND DEMENTED

They say music helps.  Old lips,
silent for years, begin to move again,
mouthing the words to a song once loved.

In the backyard, by the pool, we are listening to oldies
from the seventies.  Oh, baby, baby, it’s a wild world.
We look up, brightening:  Cat Stevens singing our song.
Put that one on, I say, when I’m no longer sure who you are.
Maybe, as I lie in my nursing home bed,
it will carry me back to when I heard it playing
in a dorm on Mount Scopus where a window looked out
on olive trees and rock-studded hills; on the Old City down below,
its ancient stone walls turning pink in the setting sun.  
I will hear those words, and it will all come back:
that dorm room in Jerusalem, two beds pushed together,
bedsprings squeaking beneath our love.

Let me hear Hummingbird, so I can sit on a bench
near my room in the Village, where Jaynie, my first Bahai friend,
taught me to use electric curlers and to pluck my eyebrows.
Put on Bye, bye, American pie, and I will dance again
in a high school gym in Springfield, Vermont,
and go parking with Ronnie on country roads.
I will feel his fingers unclasping my bra.

My friend tells me her mother recites Shakespeare,
but doesn’t always recognize her family.
I won’t be Juliet and you won’t be Romeo,
but, please, if I stare at you vacantly,
hold my hand and whisper to me,
Oh, baby, baby, it’s a wild world.    
    
To buy the book:

https://www.amazon.com/Feet-Lives-Jerusalem-Breath-Vermont/dp/1953829589