Author Archives: Leslie Schultz

“Sylvan” for April 19, 2019

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Sylvan
      for James Peter Danielsen
  
 I have it now,
 my great-grandfather’s axe.
 Once upon a time,
 he was a woodcutter
 in the Old Country.
  
 Still a young man, he came 
 to Oneida County
 to swing his axe
 as a lumberjack
 in the Northwoods.
  
 When I knew him, 
 in the Paper Valley
 of the Fox River, 
 he was retired from the mills.
 He had silver hair,
  
 well-cut suits, 
 a gentle smile,
 His Danish vowels flowed
 musically like a spring
 brook over smooth stones.
  
 We called him Grandpa Jim.
 He married Mae late,
 she with blue eyes as cold
 as the Danish sea, a tongue
 sharp as a switchblade.
  
 I don’t have his blood,
 or his slender, elegant bones.
 Just this axe, and its echo
 ringing to fell green trees, and
our shared reverence for paper.
  
 Leslie Schultz
James Peter Danielson Easter 1955 (April 23) Flanked by Step-grandsons: Richard Charles Schultz (left) and David Schultz (right)

“Ramshackle” for April 18, 2019

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Ramshackle
  
 The house on the headland,
 once snug,
 is now ransacked by wind, 
 pelted by rain,
 invaded by small seeds
 seeking to catch hold
 in a new place.
  
 Needle grasses burst 
 through floorboards.
 White petals cling,
 fresh découpage,
 to fading blue wallpaper.
 Saplings pierce the shingles.
 And all summer, bees patrol.
  
 Leslie Schultz

“Quasar” for April 17, 2019

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Quasar
  
 “Quasi-stellar”:
 nefarious stolen light,
 pulsating power,
 whirling disk of hot gas—
 electric! magnetic!
 organized around
 a black hole
 that consumes galaxies,
 sucks them in.
  
 Ah, mystery solved.
 There are people
 like that,
 powerful ones
 who want to be stars.
  
 I watch them 
 from a distance.
 I try
 not
 to be
s
  u
   c
    k
      e
        d
          i
            n
              .
   
 Leslie Schultz
Quasar (public domain photo by NASA)

“Paris” for April 16, 2019

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Paris
  
 Notre-Dame de Paris, how can you burn?
 I watch the compass needle of your spire.
 Your glow flares and falls, and so I must mourn.
  
 I have walked beside you, consecrated urn,
 who anchors passions and banks human fire.
 Heart of the City of Light, how can you burn?
  
 My footsteps echoed inside you. I could discern
 your perfume distilled from fervent desire.
 Your glow flares and falls; your city must mourn.
  
 Stone Mother, Grey Lady, where shall we turn?                                                                         
 Our hearts are heavy with praise and useless ire.
 Notre-Dame de Paris, how can you burn?
  
 Could your serene blue gaze help us learn                                                                        
 to sing on despite this ruined choir?
 Your glow flares and falls, and all France must mourn.
  
 Our Eternal Lady, you shall return,
 but today we weep as you seem to expire.
 Notre-Dame de Paris, how can you burn?
 Your glow flares and falls, and the world must mourn.
  
  
 Leslie Schultz

Like everyone, I am shocked and devasted by the sight of flames engulfing, yesterday, the gothic church of Notre-Dame de Paris. I was last there ten years ago, with my dear friend and my daughter, and I keep thinking about the contrast between the joy then and the great sadness now.

For me, a cri de coeur requires form to contain it. Perhaps that is why this poem came as a villanelle. Though any response I can make seems wholly inadequate, I offer this poem and these photographs, all taken on March 24, 2009. From the dawn-lit window of our small hotel to Sainte Chapelle, Pont Saint-Michel, the Seine, a small couscous restaurant on the Left Bank,–all were taken in the vicinity of Notre-Dame that happy day.

“Olive Trees” for April 15, 2019

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Olive Trees
  
 Gift, we are told, of Owl-eyed Athena, 
 she of the gaze like sun-polished steel,

 but I think always of soft Italy,
 the countryside greening in early spring.
  
 I recall those powerfully stunted trunks
 rising from earth that still-cool day in March,
  
 trees ringing the walls circling a hill town.
 Monteriggioni—aloof, untaken—
  
 had inspired Dante, served as his blueprint
 for impregnable Hell’s ninth rung. Our car
  
 was banned, but entry was easy for us,
 seeking lunch at a famed restaurant. Doves
  
 roosted in the stone chill of the entrance:
 cooing, dropping feathers, lime, wisps of straw.
  
 Forsythia spiked golden against church stones.
 Cobbles rang. We heard noon bells. Soon, Easter
  
 would arrive. We ate light egg pasta, sipped
 dark red local wine marked authentically
  
 with black rooster-marks of true Chianti.
 The stripped-bare restroom offered elegant
  
 austerity, just a hole in the floor
 with two stone footprints—welcome suggestions
  
 for the slightly befuddled foreign guest—
 paper, and a tiny basin, a latch
  
 on the door. Needs must and not a thing more.
 Refreshed, cleansed, we passed back through the ancient
  
 opening, returned to our winding road. 
 Descending on foot. we paused to glance back:
  
fourteen linked towers against the sky, soft
 white flowers, fresh, resting on glaucous points.
  
 The storied olive’s silver-blue-green leaves
 made fluttering pennants near the car park.
   
 Leslie Schultz