Simon Perchik

Arm in Arm

You make it easy  ̶  two sunbathers
waiting for the lake to freeze
sure they will walk arm in arm

on what once was water, will never drown
the way those in love are always listening
for ice as it rises to the surface

 ̶  these two came here to hold on
keep from slipping away
though all summer one day over another

is hollowed out for its ashes
for the fire whose only name
is the sweat that's trickling now

from your heart, making room
for the smoke to melt, become dew again
already darkened from the nights alone

washed with promises to be a sea again
bring you back to shore as the soft kiss
that long ago was frozen on the spot.

This Graveyard

You think it's a hillside though from habit
these leaves still swim in weeds kept wet
from some billions year old meeting place

where whales were bottom feeders
long before half the sea became a sky
still miles deep with determined crabs

now gathering as geese and butterflies
and the longing for a shore: this graveyard
goes back even further to when a fence

was sacred, guarded by the gate kept closed
let you dead bury each other
be fed in shells and distances.

Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, Forge, Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker and elsewhere. His most recent collection is The Family of Man Poems published by Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library, 2021. For more information including free e-books and his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website at simonperchik.com To view one of his interviews please follow this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSK774rtfx8