Calling

Torn between overflowing

coral bells on one side, and a haze

of pale blue, yellow-starred

forget-me-nots on t’other,

I let myself be torn,

laughing with March hares

and birdsong awakening fields.

Red oak leaf buds unfurl,

await the heightening sun,

their chandelier clusters dangling

against clear sky. Heart-shaped

Miner’s lettuce speckles,

while warm yellow heads

beckon, “Taste us!”

Earth’s waters have burst.

Everything is calling

in its depth

to our depth.

Orange, black wings latch

onto veined meadow flowers

stilled by sweetness,

hanging on moments of

bliss.

  Listen to 11 poems and two songs on Poems page

Review by Terry Ehret, Sonoma County Poet Laureate,  (2004-2006)

“The poems in Songs from a Small Universe range in tone from

the quiet and personal to the ecstatic and prayerful. Some have a gripping, dramatic narrative of grief, and others a surprising, looping, overlapping run of images, capturing a parent’s “somersault” through the years. Throughout, the work is heartfelt and tender, even when expressing anger, fear or pain.”

Review by Joseph Zaccardi, poet and editor of the Marin Poetry Center Anthology, http://www.marinpoetrycenter.org/newsletter/2010_March.htm

“Songs from a Small Universe is an intensely  moving book of poetry, it is indeed a small universe of beautiful words, and it is vast...His poems re-imagine the formation of small universes: the cells of the body, the galaxies of the spirit, the verses that touch us all: the oneness of the universe we share.”

  

It is with great pleasure that I am finally able to share these poems with you. May the joy they have given me spill over to you.

Please feel free to read and listen to a selection from this first book. See whether the work strikes a chord, a resonance, a ripple in your depths.

 

If you like what you hear and see, please order a book.

Events are also listed, and I am available for poetry engagements and house concerts.

All the photos were taken by Theadora Block.

 

Thank you so much.

             

                                 Raphael Block