Poem #3 for Fall, 2015, Creative Writing

                 Baby Sister

She is a fluttering, fragile
Crystalline configuration
Falling slowly, fusing suddenly
As she lands, miraculously, upon us.

I scarcely exhale when she is placed in my arms
and marvel-- how dainty! how delicate!
But when the shrieking storm comes
I sometimes forget her beauty.

Looking up close, she and I are worlds within ourselves
Both exquisitely, stubbornly unique--
From a distance, though, it is simple to see
We are formed from the same soft stuff.

                                                  --by Meira Nagel

Poem #2 for Fall, 2015 Creative Writing

                  The Ocean Floor

Empty crystal spheres peering into a world 

that tramples above the ocean she drowns in.

Legs of giants swinging purposefully around her

in a whirl of city movement she does not belong to.

Anchored to the cracks in the pavement 

and her shopping cart of treasure once buried. 

Instead of swimming to the surface

her words sink below the subway lines. 

A fish out of water but not yet on land

the streets are a house without being a home. 

As if every Starbucks cup is filled with hemlock

because hers is used for collecting change.

As the humans walk by and pretend not to see

because God forbid their consciences should soil.

While she knows they can’t give her all she needs

she needs them all to give. 

Though she’s swimming upstream 

against a tide of slacks and heels.

She’ll always have the marked fins that make her a fish

albeit in an ocean too salty. 

And only because the guilt was too much 

and those empty crystal spheres seemed more to me 

like an oracle’s crystal balls

did I give her my bottle of water.

                                                      --by Tova Hammer