Different Slants

So, I’m this old new guy

In an old

Small Town

In a big new state

I joined a poet’s group

Nice woman there

Carefully looks me over

Figures out

That Hanukkah

Is possibly my holiday

Clever woman

Then she leans over to me

And whispers:

“There’s this tiny Jewish cemetery

In a mostly

Christian Town

Near here

And their red steel

Entrance sign

With its big Jewish star

Collapsed on the ground

In the mud

Makes me feel bad

It’s not right

Maybe you can fix it”

***

I backed up from her whisper

A righteous Christian

If ever there was one

Does she think I somehow

Have magic powers

Able to lift steel girders

With a wink and a prayer??

***

(Read on …)

Sometimes the Phoenix Burns

Sometimes the Phoenix Returns

by Robert M. Katzman, October 3, 2016  (and updated a year later)

(In classical mythology, the Phoenix was a unique bird that lived for five or six centuries in the Arabian Desert, after this time burning itself on a funeral pyre and rising from the ashes with renewed youth to live through another cycle.)

On a grey drizzly Rosh Hashanah morning, I was sitting on my squeaking old cedar swing in Racine, Wisconsin, where Jews seem to be an endangered species. Just sitting still, staring at this massive brick fireplace I built out of heavy reddish paving bricks during my long winter without Joyce. Her illness kept her away from our home for months. I wanted to build something permanent, something that would stay with me. I decided to build a fire.

(Read on …)

Copyright July 6, 2016

There is a fluidity and capriciousness to time and events.

There is no way to predict what will occur next based on what has happened before. Even a series of good events, one following another, doesn’t mean that kind of luck will continue, or the reverse, either. There is no pattern, no rationalization or balance as to why things happen in a person’s life. Why do I write this?

Last September, during a street fair in Racine, Wisconsin, a smallish town of less than 80,000 located next to Lake Michigan, just north of Kenosha, 30 miles south of Milwaukee and about 27 miles north of the Illinois border, my wife Joy and I met a very nice local couple named Brad and Rose Bliss.

In this nine months later follow-up story to what happened in that story, just about every single significant thing changed. No, none of us is or was famous and no one would have read about any of us in some newspaper; but what happened then caused our paths to cross during that street fair, and subsequently made a friendship bloom between two new settlers in Racine and a long established couple.

(Read on …)

January 10, 2016 (Sunday)

So, I am home alone, recuperating, with my dogs Betsy and Jasmine, who keep me warm in frigid Wisconsin. I can stand up and lie down, but no sitting or I’m in big trouble. Prostate surgery is not something to mess around with.

I discourage nice friends who live nearby from visiting, because the (unstated) aspects of recovery are difficult to deal with, and constant. About two weeks before most things are better. Burning pain is a real part of it. I look fine (ok, not gorgeous) and no one could tell something was wrong unless they lived with me for a day. Time moves v-e-r-y  s-l-o-w-l-y. The dogs wake me before sunrise, follow me around every damn minute, have to go outside endlessly and if I choose to rebel, they leave me a little message. The Dog Mafia.

(Read on …)

Robert M. Katzman © Halloween, 2015

Saturday afternoon

Late autumn

Unfamiliar country road

I keep losing

Rock n’ Roll on my radio

Hunt and peck

Hunt and peck

And I miss my damn exit

Cursing the wasted time

I turn east on:

What?

I look for a sign

“Seven Mile Road”

Stretching into the horizon

No stoplights in sight

I zoom ahead

(Read on …)

Robert M. Katzman’s Amazing Story:  http://www.differentslants.com/?p=355

By Robert M. Katzman

© October 3, 2015

 

The munching horses have become more familiar

The insanely circuitous route I take home

Each night a bit less incomprehensible

The surly burly guy with steel grey hair

Smiles at me when I buy gas from him

The beautiful deep brown Root River

Less of an impossible barrier every morning

As I learn the handful of roads crossing it

Going south on 32 each morning

I pause at Main Street’s western turn

Greeting the blinding sunrise over Lake Michigan

As if it were a cuddly puppy

Waiting just for me, too

Sometimes a single sailboat passing

Before I turn west towards

The grey concrete interstate

(Read on …)