2 Poems by Michael E. Stone

Bird Arrows

Sparrows wheel in formation of
small, sleek flyers keeping
more or less to an arrow head
of birds, of wings, moving.

Towards evening their twisting
avian corkscrews seek a perch.
They decorate old tv antennas and
roof edges with lumps and rows of bird.

At dawn the wheel turns again.


The Voice

I shut my eyes.
Hypnagogic
half-visions — half-dreams.
closer to sleep
than to waking, and

clearly
I heard your voice
calling my name
in  the very tone
you always used.

Just once.

Your voice,
three years gone,
rang in my ears.

Unlike in my dreams.
It sounded real.
I waited to hear it again,

Silence.


Bionote

Michael Stone was born in England in 1938. His family moved to Australia in 1941, where he received his schooling, up to the completion of his BA (Hons.) degree in 1960. He is retired from teaching at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and has lived in Jerusalem since 1966. He has published poems in numerous literary journals and ezines as well as translations of medieval Armenian poetry. His poetry has also been anthologized in a number of collections. Two books of his work have been published -- Selected Poems (2010) and Orange Light (2016) both by Cyclamens and Swords Press. A poetic translation of Adamgirk', a medieval Armenian epic about Adam and Eve in 6,000 lines, appeared with Oxford University Press in 2007. Some of his poems have been translated into Armenian and Italian.