Norbert Hirschhorn
The October Editor's Pick Poet is Norbert Hirschhorn
Please feel free to email Norbert at: bertzpoet@yahoo.com
THE LAST NEANDERTHAL
The red ball sinks into the sea
I hum in my throat
It grows cold
Keeping warm with my woman
Skin to skin
A fire in front of the cave
Keeping full
Food from shells great-winged birds
Smashed on cliffs below
Eggs from their nests
Honey from cracks fruit roots
Meat when our spears flew
I can smell each tree
Each animal the wind
Songs in the wind
I like to make noise
From both ends of my body
It grows cold
When the long-legs came
They threw my children into the fire
They took my woman
A STRANGENESS IN MY MIND
(Wordsworth)
So cold in the operating theatre.
The nurse—her name tag ‘Florence’—
draped my body in a thermal blanket:
me, freezing in Crimea.
The surgeon drove a needle under
my eye, a numbing fluid,
like Cornwall thumbing out Gloucester’s
vile jelly.
Strapped to the gurney, head held firm, ECG
leads on my chest and limbs, BP cuff
squeezing my arm like a python, IV drip
delivering soporifics.
Twin lamps on the surgeon’s magnifying
lens approached: my eyesight blurred,
a twilit fog. I became like the deer
traveling through the dark.
Water flushed my eye. Breakup of crystalline
light I’d seen before when as a child
I nearly drowned in a mountain lake,
indifferent sun overhead.
Half-dream: suspended from the ceiling,
bathed in hydroponic fluid,
dozens like me in sterile glass tanks,
asynchronous beeps portending disaster.
Clouded vision, like peering through
a rain forest spider web—
opaque lens sucked out, an acrylic
immortal taking its place.
Later that night, my eye went blind:
street lights from the window—blind;
fingers waving in front of my face—blind.
‘Deal with it in the morning’, I whispered,
as my beloved slept soundly beside me.
LIFE-COURSE DEPARTMENT STORE
entrance
layette
baby clothes
teddy bears
school back pack
bike
sneakers
skateboard
video games
hooded sweats
wedding list
wine rack
appliances
gardening tools
golf clubs
treadmill
blood pressure cuff
optometrist
hearing aids
cane
walker
wheelchair
shroud
exit
Norbert Hirschhorn is a public health physician, commended by President Bill Clinton as an “American Health Hero.” He lives in London and Beirut. He has published four collections, the most recent, To Sing Away the Darkest Days. Poems Re-imagined from Yiddish Folksongs (Holland Park Press, London, 2013). His poems have appeared in numerous US/UK publications, several as prize-winning. See his website: www.bertzpoet.com.