New Poetry by Ted Bookey

FOR EVA MIODOVNIK OPPENHEIM (1931-2014)

                  —Not just any death

As I have lost the previous generation, one after another,

I cried, “I do not want to be one of the elephants

left in charge of memory and the family stories,

who receives all the confidences.”  And now I am

one of the few left of my own generation.

All around us the feeling of life slipping away.

So much loss suffered.  Wanting to hold onto

every minute, to stop complaining, reassure

all those we love.  It can all disappear

in the blink of an eye.

I stroke the dog, she wags her tail.  The cat

lashes hers.  I too would love to experience

the innocence our pets have

rather than this death-

obsessed human mind.

I think I had that innocence and sense

of certainty long ago, when people

still kept being born

into my life, instead

of leaving it.

- Ted Bookey 2016

Ted Bookey’s Collected Poems With a W/hole in One, 1970-2010 was published in 2010 by Moon Pie Press.  Originally from New York City, he now lives in Maine, where he teaches both poetry and humor in the Senior College program at the University of Maine at Augusta.  He is the author of four books of poems, translations with his wife Ruth of the poems of Erich Kastner, and several plays that have been produced in Maine and off-off Broadway.