Judy Katz-Levine
Judy Katz-Levine has a new book out, The Everything Saint, available from Amazon and published by WordTech Communications. Her other books include Ocarina and When The Arms Of Our Dreams Embrace. A chapbook, When Performers Swim, The Dice Are Cast, emphasizes her work in jazz. Poems and translations have appeared recently in Salamander, Blue Unicorn, Ibbetson Street, Miriam's Well, Writing In A Woman's Voice, and Peacock Journal Anthology. Also a jazz flutist, she enjoys playing jam sessions in the Boston area.
She told me of the cousin who caught it, serotonin depletion after 4 months still ill. Solitary hours, reading, do tai chi, strong coffee and the rabbit who died under our car, of a rabbit illness we think.
I look out the window at an old Victorian
hands trembling on the wheel
my daughter places her hand over mine
"You can tell me anything"
A prison, a handful of sparrows flying while I drink a
cup of coffee at the cafe.
Who has forgotten? Who has spoken to a youth who
will save a life?
The great Django Reinhardt wrote a song called "Nuage" - clouds - today there are no clouds - a pellucid sky, slight gold inscribed on the mountains and pure azure - a raven floats, the sun broad as in the poems of Whitman's "Song Of Myself"
But we remember also the marches
against the wars of horror and shattered bones
who would cry out against Napalm
the burning of villages, not just
one who prophesied in the '60's train
but many friends, many friends
Because illness was honing in like a scraggly coyote.
We became still, one within the other folded like leaf within leaf.
And we took strength from mere light, mere water, mere melodies
chanted in quiet devotion as the first star laughed over the dogwood.
My brother came, and, again,my mother, and the nurse remarked on what a wonderful family I had, warm, as the kids with drug problems played chess in the open waiting room, and an adolescent with long black hair and earrings in her nose drew intricate pen and ink sketches.
