The Nature Of Hope
By Carl Kopman
On The Temporary Nature Of…
By Carl Kopman
Why a poem I wonder
is the place I need to be
within a clarity…
without thought
but sometimes rhyme…
Journey As A Circle Searching For Itself
By Carl Kopman
Prelude
To A
Mendocino
Suite
Just Out of Reach Of a Tangled Web Is Simplicity
By Carl Kopman
While searching for the mortuary box containing Robert Levin’s ashes in the basement of my Berkeley home I found in an anonymous old carton, amongst other things, a poem I’d written back in my day, Gypsy No Eyes!
Virtual Robert Levin
By Carl Kopman
We sat in my car parked by the beach at Todd’s Point smoking a joint; this was Mendocino after all. I had brought Robert the book of photographs we’d produced after he’d moved into the nursing home. He was pleased with the quality of the photographs.
Visit to a Mental Institution
By Carl Kopman
I was sitting on a wheelchair parked in the atrium of Peaceful Springs tearing at leaves on a potted Philodendron when my wife approached cautiously. I was expecting the visit but in a daze from the voltage they were zapping through my brain.
Kiko and Ikor
By Carl Kopman
Hi Kiko,
It’s September in the year 2016. I am 75 years old and you are not yet five and a half years old. You’ve just started kindergarten. I pick you up on Tuesdays and we go off to the YMCA for an hour of swimming in a shallow heated pool. You like to dive-bomb off the tiled edge splashing me with a spray of water and laughter twice your size. We also go to the gym where you arrange, climb upon, and jump large leather objects you move about to suit your purposes. They are bigger than you, but you heft them about and play wild for a time.
The Promise
By Carl Kopman
Birthed
He felt like
The Heartbeat of a feather
The Airness of a dream
The Emptiness of purity
The Eternal of eternity
In No Particular Order
By Carl Kopman
I remember in no particular order my mother dying twice, one lung filling with the fluid of another.
Grace Paley’s Pen
By Carl Kopman
I was driving my cab through the dark velvet underground of Lou Reed streets in New York City about the time Jimmy Hendrix stepped one electric foot onto the stage at Monterey Pop and Neil Armstrong planted the other on the moon. I could barely see her in the rain reflections of my headlights when she hailed me at Workman’s Hall.