Heart

Libby R. Friedberg

New Year's Day — 1991

Unsummoned
a follicle of memory
invades the armor
of my aging bones
with a careless dance
fluid as sparkling
water over rocks.
That was me, it says.
Once I could move like that
arms and head on swivels
legs springy as saplings.
That was me.

Archeology

Truth,
you smiling bastard,
you supercilious know-it-all.
you watch me squirm and sweat
and play my educated games.
my scrupulous digs
among the shards and fossils of my life,
my endless treasure hunt for clues,
my careful fingers brushing sand
across the screening,
even as I try to hold the frame
and see it loosening,
missing a stud,
coming apart.

Libby R. Friedberg (1920-2006) grew up in the Bronx and, in 1940, graduated from Hunter College (CUNY) with a BA in English Literature. She later attended a one-week writer's workshop at William Paterson College, where John Ciardi was one of her workshop teacher-mentors. In her mid-life and later years, Friedberg discovered and finally "allowed" her poetic voice, but never published beyond her Bergen County Ethical Culture Society newsletter. These poems in 2RV represent her first exposure to a wider audience.
contact Heidi Friedberg-Campbell

 

13.3 (Spring 2009)   The 2River View AuthorsPoemsPDFArchives2River

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