Snow Fall
The first snow fell
in my native Novi Sad.
Something I had not seen
during my thirty years in California.
Now visiting my native land
where I lived long ago.
I see and feel a new snow,
snow I had not touched
since my youth.
A small smile
and many memories
of all the snowmen we had made
in our yard, a yard that no longer exist.
The street, our street remains
but everything is different
A new building replaced the one
in which I grew up.
Our mother had created a family garden,
a Garden of Eden with bright flowers
basking under lush fruit trees.
It is not hard to bask in the memories
of oleanders white, yellow, and pink
and their shared celestial aroma
set back into my dreams
as well the rest of our small street
so close to the Danube.
Many new people live there now
with no memory of that icy winter
and the atrocities of 1942.
My Danube, are you the same river,
where my brother and I rowed
our sport boat under blue skies?
The sun still rises from that river
and drowns again in the evening.
Children play in the shallows and row boats,
but I have moved far away,
across the Ocean.
Poetry Falls
Poems, like rose petals,
and the leaves of autumn,
fall off me whenever
there is an internal fluttering,
a trembling, shaking or
external wind or storm.
It is a natural growth,
like a snake shedding
outlived skin for the new.
Any emotion, any thought,
awe with nature and beauty,
may cause it.
I remember writing my first poem,
after seeing the Adriatic Sea
the first time during a school trip,
at age thirteen.
I published it
and dared to write more
and shared it widely at age eighteen.
In both cases, my parents, and teachers
offered strong loving support
and encouragement.
I have always enjoyed nature
and sang in various forms
from the beginning of life
before it steadily poured out
in the form of poetry.
I was exposed to the beauty and wisdom
of poetry by my father early in life.
He walked through our home reciting poetry
and quoting sayings of wisdom.
My mother did the same.
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