Milton P. Ehrlich – Two Poems
Let There Be Light
Walking the 2 miles home
from the market on a drab,
cloudy, grey day of November,
I shlump along overwhelmed
with sadness, remembering
it’s almost 80 years after,
The night of broken glass.
A young couple holding hands
bounces along towards me
with blinding bright smiles
that could have illuminated
the Ebbets’ Field of my youth
on a starless summer night.
They triggered a memory
of my adolescent folklore:
When I was their age,
we knew if someone had sex
by the way they walked.
The lilt in their gait
gave them away.
They reminded me to lighten up
and smile as I struggled to carry
pounds of organic Fiji apples,
red potatoes and 2 pineapples
that were on sale.
Once again, my wife calls
to remind me to sit down
and rest in order to avoid
another heart attack.
Listening to Rain
I feel the comfort of rain
when pocks of raindrops
batter the roof of my car.
I draw a cleansing breath.
Rain, rain, don’t go away,
bring trumpeting daffodils
and blue hibiscus
that bloom in May.
Bring fresh water:
no more stagnant
ponds or lakes,
no more fields of corn
choking in drought.
Let me slosh around,
in sun showers
and hunker down
in the freezing drizzle
of dark November days.
Lightening, the clap of thunder,
a pheromone-tinged climax
releases bountiful showers,
filling wells and rain barrels.
No one’s throat is ever parched
and all creatures have their fill.
When the naked rain
streams over my body
with an ion-induced
arousal, it makes me
reach for a warm body.
Love is the music of rain.
In a drenching downpour
body and soul mesh.
I once swam from water to land
from an ancient part of my brain.
Please bury me at sea.
Author’s Statement on Beauty
What can be said about beauty that hasn’t been said?
That it is a moment of feeling when breath, heart and head are in unity?
Or that it is also felt in extreme opposites: the touch of the baby’s hand, the movement of an old craftsman’s hand–that it is everywhere, like the air?
And yet.
And yet.
Wasn’t that one sip of air more pure, more rare, than any other?
Milton P. Ehrlich, Ph.D. is an 85 year old psychologist and a veteran of the Korean War. He has published poems in Descant, Toronto Quarterly Review, Wisconsin Review, Christian Science Monitor, Huffington Post and The New York Times.