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Judy Bebelaar USA  Judy Bebelaar, born in Martinez, California, earned her BA and teaching credential at UC Berkeley, her MA at San Francisco State University, and taught (37 years) in San Francisco public high schools. Eight of her students won awards from National Scholastic; they produced anthologies and a national prize-winning calendar. Her poetry has appeared in many magazines and 2 anthologies. And Then They Were Gone(nonfiction) follows the story of her students at Opportunity High, who experienced the tragedy of Jonestown, Guyana and will be published by Sugartown Publishing in 2016. Her first book of poetry is Walking Across the Pacific (Finishing line Press, 2014.) “In compelling language and memorable images, the poems in Walking Across the Pacific tell the ancient stories of sorrow and guilt, love and loss, and love again.” Lucille Lang Day, author of Married at Fourteen,” and 5 books of poetry. judybebelaar.com.
Eyes
The miracle of the variegated iris:
sea green, China blue, pale hazel,
deep brown laced with gold.
The pupil, magical opening,
widening as the sun dies,
narrowing to light
deep well, gate to life and death.
The lens cradled in its sac
filtering Rembrandt’s ruddy faces and dark carnivals,
Van Gogh’s fields of gold, dark crows, blue beds,
Goya’s cloud-shrouded cities,
this wind-rippled lake
sanctuary for Canada Geese, mallards, loons
and one snowy egret.
The sclera, small planet
blue-white in babies,
veined with red by life’s struggles,
yellowed with trouble or age.
Not last, the retina—
delicate screen,
even a small tear threatening
the end of the show.
The eye a window, a sky of its own,
a morning light, a shutter
to close on sorrows too great,
horror not to be borne.
The lake a watery eye
the liquid that keeps it
mobile, easy, alive
and deeper, the vitreous fluid
holy water that must not spill.
Donne’s eye beams twisted,
the silent singer of love’s songs,
a flame, a flicker.
The lashes a fringed fan to hide naked feeling.
How they can glint in anger,
hard as coal or diamonds
or soften at the sight of a child come home
I think of my student Lamont’s eyes,
pale green jewels set in brown skin
or my mother’s eyes which seemed unmoored
toward the end,
the adoring eyes of dogs
the wise old eyes of cats, golden or green,
the eyes of deer, birds’ eyes,
the eyes of dragonflies.
How they well, unbidden,
at this soft flicker of birds across
water
or even at an image in the mind’s eye,
a memory, unbidden too
sparked by - who knows why –
the way these willowy branches bend toward the earth
like a mother
at the grave of a child.
All poems have been selected
from Walking Across the
Pacific by
Andrena Zawinski and are printed with the permission of the
author
© Copyright, 2015,
Judy Bebelaar. |