B.Z. Niditch- Three Poems

ON BOARD 

Beyond Dover's home harbor

you hear the morning call

of birdsong from a canary

reaching high

over the sound barrier

by reefs on the ocean,

a ship's noted passenger

hears the brief melody

and composes

a jazz sonata for oboe

in b flat major,

then attends its premiere

in Paris,

also listening on board

is a Boston poet 

writing his lyrical epic

based on that one note

theme in his word play,

an English artist washes

the canvas of modernism

after hearing

the air born winged singer

in the impalpable wind,

yet what of the canary

who escaped its cage.

IN SOHO, 2014

By the Savoy club

midnight corners me

too shy to speak of love

except in a foreign tongue

within my original shadow

and body in adolescence

wanting to wrestle

with words in the snow

here in Greenwich Village time

with a sensibility

which shivers in half light

bartering for warmth

here in the subway

out to Soho 

feeling detached

in the uncongenial absent air

collecting injustices

wanting to write

without any balance of sadness

but with sanguine recognition

sobered by a young memory

along the way.

SIXTIES IN MANHATTAN

Expecting Andy Warhol

to open his Factory

under the strobe lights

of film and painting

from long lines

of a runaway's curiosity

after riding my bicycle

with my cat's footprints

close to me

through Central Park

with the barometer

down to zero

in the limelight

birds scatter around me

taking out my notebook

on a bench

to write my diary

hearing a train whistle

in caravans of loneliness

inside its windows

amid the shivering trees

it is a passerby nightfall 

where no one recognizes me.



B.Z. NIDITCH is a poet, playwright, fiction writer and teacher.

His work is widely published in journals and magazines throughout the world, including: Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Art; The Literary Review; Denver Quarterly; Hawaii Review; Le Guepard (France); Kadmos (France); Prism International; Jejune (Czech Republic); Leopold Bloom (Budapest); Antioch Review; and Prairie Schooner, among others.

He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.