Five Poems by Chris Sahar

 

THE EVERGREENS 

(written while listening to J. Brahms' “How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place” from his German Requiem)

I stand in an open field.
Sorrow blows the tops of tallgrass,
Sun’s flickering rays sieved through
Evergreens’ blue at the apogee of summer,
Cradling newborns in their limbs and trunks.

I raise my open palms to block the wind.
Turn and narrow my eyes upon the evergreens
With promise to shelter these fragile newborns,
Protect against the inevitable winter’s blows.

I allow sorrow’s gales to buffet me,
Question how long I can stand
To marvel and imbibe summer’s fleeting fecundity,
The evergreens’ potent promises,
Before Fall flags the end of all of this
With its gaudy, tattered tartan of gold, rose, and nectarine.

 

SPEAK TO ME NOTHING

 
Speak to me nothing - idleness freezes my brain!
I ask: When will I see you?
Hear that laugh ridiculous and lovely,
Imbibe such heavenly scent, snatch your reflection
unobstructed from my bed?

I chase the drinking hours, travel
Glossy, steel-encased beds
Clutched to a stranger’s second-hand fantasies,
Grasping at past seasons of intimate ecstatic splendour
But Nothing speaks!

I blindly nod, tip my hat, count pittances,
Hedge frantic bets on another
Commercial soul selling
Cheap talk, unhappy convenience –
Something rings, I reply
But Nothing speaks!

So addled am I, I fear –
Gravely- to err, misplace
These costly amulets of
How much, how very much ...
Loved It is, to be
Loved by You.

 

ON BEING A COMPOSER

I write doting dots,
Wriggly Squiggles,
Codes alphanumeric
Inhaling, Exhaling,
Withholding, Manifesting
Squeaks, squalls,
Murmurs, sighs,
Caterwauling chimes,
Loping footfalls,
Shuffled cries,
Marauding epiphanies
Intelligible, Indelible
(Comprehensible?)
Possibly, Indefensible.

  

CHEETAH (stanzas 1 – 4)

The Cheetah is a blanket -
Polyester, furry, black spots
Spackled on a field of orange.
It kept my mother warm and swaddled
During spells of delirium as cancer
Tore through her bones.


The cheetah came from her bedroom
Which she visited aided by a holding hand
When the cancer retreated its decimation
And allowed her to climb our house's
Narrow wood stairway carpeted in burgundy
Fabric slabs my father laid with Fidel, his employee.


She thumbed her notebooks there -
All scribbled with short stories and poems
To share at the writers' group meetings
She could no longer attend, too weak
To compose, there seemed nothing to share.


Finished with her inspection, she sat slanted on her bed,
A floppy queen-sized one with her imprint still visible
From decades of sleep while that of her husband's
Long gone after ten years in the grave.
She would ask the aide to open a closet to choose
Outfits for the changing season to hang on the downstairs rack
Crammed to the side of her hospital bed beneath the chandelier
That had glittered for Christmas dinner and special guests and now
Illuminates medications, hearing aids, flowers, books, and distilled water.


Soon those visits stopped as the cancer pounced
From its lair to spread and bind her to the hospital bed
For many days into nights - the cheetah covering her from
Clavicle well past the phalanges of her feet
When air-conditioning froze or the thermostat failed
To abate the winter drafts’ creep through warped windows.


The cheetah warmed her until the day before she died,
And when she died it comforted me through the winter-tide
That followed her death. I dreamt of her home of fifty years
Often: strangers to evict or my mother answering the door
Confused, dislocated as if cognizant she was imprisoned
Temporarily in one of my dreams. But soon the house
Dreams were engulfed by my Present, the cheetah
Clutter.


Yesterday, the cheetah was bagged and unloaded.
A space is open in my linen chest, my dreams
Relieved of hauntings from a home no longer.
Now, unexpected tears spring from quiet dens.

 A MEMORY

I played the seashore
Revelled in castles built from
Silicate dripplings grown hard
By brilliantined canvas of assured
Mid-August’s azures, goldenrod,
Emerald that coloured our ice-cream coned
Sundays on barrier islands’ shores.

I wish I could erase today’s castles as easily as
When a child who divebombed into currents,
Eager for a six-footer to cusp and throttle me
Back to the glassy berth of clamshells, sand,
Suntan oil and toppled castles merged to sea
To form this berth that saves all from drowning,
Resuscitates moments of wreckful abandonment
From ocean floor’s amniotic warmth; for is there not
A superfluity of silicate, an audacious absence of shadow
To dribble grander edifices to refract my unkempt,
Unruly inner-self in these naïve fancies, dismembered
Fairy-tales, and benign wrecks of self-proclamation?

 

Chris Sahar is an organist at the historic St. James Church in Elmhurst, Queens and a substitute teacher for the New York City public schools.  He is also a music composer whose works have been performed in the US and Europe as well as a writer of poetry and libretti. He has had his music published by Editions Ferrum Music, and two of his poems, “Rainey Park 2018” and “33”, published in an online poetry journal in 2022.

Mr. Sahar holds a B.A in English literature from Oberlin College and a M.M. in music composition from Queens College/City University of New York.

Born and raised in New Jersey, Mr. Sahar has made Queens, New York his home since 1994.