Poems by BZ Niditch

ON CAMBRIDGE COMMON
( for Elizabeth Bishop
1911-19l7)

My shadow
in yours
as it yields
to awareness
of your long spell
at day’s end
here by evergreen
a thousand years old
by a deafening guitar
on parched grass
sharing with students
a timeless memory
when you returned
dazzled from Brazil
with new bubbling images
flinched by camoflaged cold
in a white kerchiefed dawn
by snow gardens
on Cambridge Common
with nothing but song
between us.

 

 

MEMORY AT NEW YEAR

Not denying
the darkness
nor forgetting
the day
you parted
like violets
on a bedside vase
letting go
by sunlit water
lapping breath
of an uncoiled past,
as cabin fever
removes the coldness
of disbelief,
we opened up
the linen closet
of a recoverable past,
a screen of colors
to embrace.