Poem by William Greenfield

Awaiting Mother’s Return

We need you mother, back
in that small kitchen with
the glossy white cabinets
coated in grease. We need
you at Christmas time to
untie those difficult knots,
like your gentle tar stained
fingers did when we came
in from the cold, to be
that nucleus, around
which we all gathered. You
were always good at puzzles.
You could fit these jig
sawed pieces together,
matching part of a son’s
strong hand to a daughter’s
soft cloud of curls. Medicine
you would be; sedating,
melting away all malice.
We have betrayed you;
you, who thought we could
be as accepting of each other
as you were of the world.
But we have damaged
the family you left behind,
and we need you now,
in your recliner watching
baseball and handing out
peach slices from
Mr. Wilken’s fruit farm.
There was very little
that you ever needed,
except your children.
And now your children
need you. So if you could
find a way to come back, we
will be waiting.

Winner of Storyteller Magazine’s People’s Choice Award in 2012, William Greenfield has had poems published in numerous literary journals, including The Westchester Review, Carve Magazine, The East Coast Literary Review, and others. After a long career in federal service, he is semi-retired and resides in the Catskill Mountains of New York.

Ira Joel Haber was born and lives in Brooklyn. He is a sculptor, painter, writer, book dealer,photographer and teacher. His work has been seen in numerous group shows bothin the USA and Europe and he has had 9 one man shows including several retrospectives of his sculpture. His work is in the collections of The Whitney Museum Of American Art, New York University, The Guggenheim Museum, The Hirshhorn Museum,The Albright-Knox Art Gallery & The Allen Memorial Art Museum. Since 2006 His paintings, drawings, photographs and collages have been published in over 230 on line and print magazines. He has received three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, two Pollock-Krasner grants, the Adolph Gottlieb Foundation grant and, in 2010, he received a grant from Artists’ Fellowship Inc. He currently teaches art to retired public school teachers at The United Federation of Teachers program in Brooklyn.