Poems by Mike Stone, USA / Israel

 

Songs of Youth

 

My thin memories were born

Among the whispering grasses

Of an Indiana field sloping down

To drink from a nameless creek.

 

They were suckled by jiggers

And sung to by whippoorwills and crickets

Under a weeping willow by the creek

And endless summers of warm sunlight.

 

Hopes and expectations shot across the night sky

And sometimes danced real slow

Pressed against young girls with hair like wheat

And tissue stuffed in their brassieres.

 

But that was good enough for me

'Cause that's what breasts felt like

Or so I thought

In the innocence of my original sin.

 

They dug up that Indiana field a few years back

And built a freeway through the middle

Of my memories and sometimes I wonder

What's stuffed in their brassieres now.

 

🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁

 

Accidental Touch

(inspired by Avshalom Guissin’s “Who Will Be My Fourteen B”)

The crowded train rushes down the tracks

Worm-holing through the night

From Amsterdam Central to Paris North

The roar and rumble blend into the inner walls and quaking windows

Til they become a dark and silent breathing.

Your head falls slightly to my side

The weight of your streaming hair

Lies like a wreath across my shoulder.

The moments stretch their glowing wink across my watch face.

In the morning, meeting with a customer –

I should move away and get some sleep

But I’m entangled in the thrall of

The guilty innocence of

The delectable deniability of

The once in a lifetime of

The don’t let it end of

The accidental touch.

 

 

Mike Stone was born in Columbus Ohio, USA, in 1947. He graduated from Ohio State University with a BA in Psychology. He served in both the US Army and the Israeli Defense Forces. Mike moved to Israel in 1978 and lives in Raanana. He has self-published eight books of poetry, four sci-fi novels, and a book of essays. Mike is married to Talma. They have 3 sons and 8 grandchildren. He has a blog at https://uncollectedworks.wordpress.com/.