A Prayer for Peace

The following sonnet was commissioned
for the bat mitzvah of a friend,
Irena Jaffe Goldstein.
I read the prayer/sonnet at her ceremony
at Park Slope Jewish Community center,
February 18, 2006.

A prayer for peace

It is too bold to ask our God for peace,
when we ourselves, whom God has given sense
and conscience seem incapable to cease
the wars which feed our need for recompense.

Rather than some rote, empty, and bland prayer,
this is a time to look within, to find
the strengths which are imperfect but still there,
the limits we have never reached. A mind

is what God gave us, and with that great gift
we can decide to go beyond request,
beyond our passive hopes, to heal the rift
which separates us from the other. Best

it is to see and then accept our foe
as sister, brother—someone we can know.

God's Breath

God’s Breath, my book of poems about grieving for the loss of my wife Betsy, has been published, and is available by writing to me at www.ronifuller.com. The price for mailing this volume is $15.00.

A second volume is currently being edited.

Wanting someone else

1
Yes, I have a wife and she is dead.
Today I know she is not returning.
As I find she has gone
the focus and the poems change.

She is and always will be here;
how different that is from having her—
in my bed, in my arms, holding hands, smiling at me,
nursing our babies, laughing at my jokes.

I know the fun we had by knowing what I lack:
the delight of the swamp, a limpkin calling,
watching the Perseid meteors, long kisses.
It took fifteen months and more to know she’ll not return.

2
I look at movies with a different eye,
wondering on the subtleties I never saw before,
in part, perhaps, because they do not exist
except within the finity of my imagination.

The Philadelphia Story
Hepburn is great, of course,
but the one I would have loved
is Hussey, beautiful in her no-nonsense way,
quick with an acid quip,
seething with a sexuality
only slightly camouflaged by her tailored suit.
Oh, Hepburn’s Tracy was fine for a fling,
but Hussey’s Liz was for a lifetime.

Yes, I have a wife, and for a lifetime.
She is still here,
but veiled as a cinema ghost,
and I cannot imagine wanting someone else.

The poet with friend Trevor and son Jonah