Tag Archives: Leslie Schultz Poetry

April 25, 2017 “Magi Minus Two”

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Magi Minus Two

Snow falls outside
as he sets to work on his prototype.
First, he threads colored drinking straws
on string, fine-tuning
the count, the order,
getting proportions right.

Then he begins cutting
thin tubing—silvery
aluminum—working
late into the night, choosing
clear fishing line, tough
but fine.

This intent man, a college senior
majoring in math and physics,
is counting down the days until
Christmas, here in married
student housing, and the ten days
beyond, to my birth,

by quietly fashioning
a great stellated dodecahydron,
a form with twenty points arrayed
in three hundred sixty degrees;
a star to hang above
his dining table,

rigid and shining,
but collapsible, something
beautiful that could follow us
wherever he might lead:
its center open, able to hold
all the hope in the world.

Leslie Schultz

My father loved speculative thought, science fiction, and mathematical principles. When I was three, he attempted to  explain a theory of time travel to me by making a paper loop and a paper mobius strip, then having me compare their surface areas and structures. He was also fond of relocating.

Although the poem imagines how it came to be, I recall this homemade star in all our homes (nine total) at least until we moved to Australia when I was twelve years old. I can also recall him talking about how he had made it, as well as packing, unpacking, repairing, and restringing this sculpture. When I called it a “star,” he corrected me with “dodecahedron” explaining that “do” signifining “two,” plus “deca” signifying “ten,” equaled “twelve.” (It still  confuses me to me, as this form had twelve faces has more than twelve points. Perhaps one of you can elucidate?) It was not my first encounter with mathematics but it was, I think, my first encounter with Greek.

I took the image of the light fixture at Como Conservatory in 2004, shortly after my dad’s death in December 2003, and I sometimes make it into a Christmas card.

This image is of me with my dad’s mom, Grandma Phyllis, and, in the background, the original dodecadhedron of my world.

LESLIE

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April 23, 2017 Poem: “Weather”

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Weather

Each day, the dawn reconstitutes our world.
Navy blue shades into lilac and gold,
reversing evening lights, and we are hurled
out of dreams, into stories yet untold.

What weather ticks against the window pane
or streams in as urgently as birdsong?
What internal turbulence might remain
from a conversation yesterday, strong

enough to shape, in answer, an insight,
or push us toward a bedrock truth at last?
Often stumbling, night-blind, we move toward light
each day we live, however overcast.

Dawn brings a form of storm as yet unwrit,
blowing in to see what we’ll make of it.

Leslie Schultz

Today’s poem is an attempt at a Shakespearean sonnet.
HAPPY SHAKESPEARE’S BIRTHDAY!

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April 20, 2017 Poem “Ali Baba: A Vinyl Memory”

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Ali Baba: A Vinyl Memory
for Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

I can still see that disk of ebony
incised with a spiral journey
ridden by one tiny diamond’s point
from its rim right to its very heart.

It was an old vinyl LP,
pressed when I was two or three,
and a perennial favorite.
Its highly-colored cardboard sleeve

showed Ali Baba, spying, in a tree
overhearing a magic password,
“Open Sesame,”
that caused the mountain-side to split

open so Ali Baba could steal
inside, after the thunderous thieves.
Most of all, I recall
how this deep cave was lit

by the light of jewels
hanging from trees,
a vision summoned
by a lone violin—

Scheherazade—unearthly beauty
pouring into a child’s ears
and glowing there, still,
after all these years.

Leslie Schultz

When I was very young, my mother would often play albums with stories on them in the afternoon. I still often think about four, in particular, wishing I could hear them again. Three of them were from this series: Tale Spinners for Children. A few days ago, I began thinking so strongly of the music from this one. The first four lines of this poem came. I waited until today for the rest of the poem to come clear and to share it here.

Image result for Tale Spinners Ali Baba

To hear an audio clip of the violin solo, just scroll down to the second one.

Which oft-heard (told, read, recorded) stories most impressed themselves upon you? I would love to hear if you’d care to share. (The other favorites in the recorded realm for me were “Beauty and the Beast” & “Aladdin and the Magic Lamp” in the Tale Spinners series, and a collection of folktales told by Beryl Berney called “All Join Hands Around the World.” I still think very often of the Japanese story she told of how there is a rabbit in the moon.)

Until tomorrow!  LESLIE

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April 19, 2017 Poem: “Portrait of a Street Musician”

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 Portrait of a Street Musician
(Paris, March 22, 2009)

I asked an expert,
later, what instrument
this musician played.

“I’ve never seen the like,”
he shrugged. “I think
it must be homemade.”

Jet-lagged, I stood
in grey Paris
among the fruit stands.

I was holding unfamiliar
coins and my camera
in my hands

when I heard a faint
strain, a light air,
a thin ribbon of sound

that I followed,
to this spot, where
it wound and unwound.

I cannot recall
the names of the notes,
their order,

just that I lifted
my lens, questioning
across the border

between us. He
nodded, clenched his jaw.
The camera whirred—

a tiny percussive sound,
like a twig snapped by
the weight of a bird—

and, as my young
daughter danced
over, how sun burned

on those coins we
offered; how he
smiled in return.

Leslie Schultz

The idea for this poem came when I was looking this morning at a catalog for the Milwaulkee Art Institute. I opened the volume at random and read, under a reproduction of his Fauve painting titled “The Wheat Field” (circa 1906), of a French painter, Maurice Vlaminck, who “was a self-taught artist who began painting purely for pleasure, while supporting himself financially by playing the violin.” That sentence made me remember this moment eight years ago–the grey light and the grey stone of the French market on a Sunday in Paris. All these years later, and I hope his playing brings him joy as well as coins. When I look at the craftsmanship of his unnameable stringed instrument, I think it must.

LESLIE

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April 18, 2017 Poem: “City Rain” (After “Spring Showers” by Alfred Stieglitz, Circa 1900)

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City Rain
after “Spring Showers,” circa 1900, by Alfred Stieglitz

These delicate mists
soften almost everything—
stones, concretes, bricks.

The old woman
in a black hat
bends
toward pavement;
the pavement shines
like the surface
of a lake, a lake ringed
by buildings
shimmering like hills.

Everything
seems to dissolve~
except this singular
sapling,
its slender trunk
rocketing
out from
a circle
of black iron,
firing
dark clouds,
explosions
of new buds,
fresh-inked on
this silver sky.

Leslie Schultz

It is raining here today, and I thought I would try a double imitation. Here is a poem inspired by a lovely New York image from more than a hundred years ago with, I think, the distinctive look of a Japanese brush painting. To see a digital image of one print of this evocative photographic capture by Alfred Stieglitz in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, click HERE.

Meanwhile, my more prosaic–and sun-drenched–black and white image, taken a couple of blocks from my house, is below.

Hoping your day holds joy in all weathers-–Leslie

Check out other participants at the NaPoWriMo Challenge 2017 home site!

Check out other participants at the NaPoWriMo Challenge 2017 home site!