Poem-A-Day

The Banks of the Stream

by Anthony Bernini 

                                        I might not know the sundered heart of Palestine

if it appeared to me along the Poestenkill.

                                        But surely, just beneath the dead

leaves pressed rigid through the year

by each new rain

something living waits.

                                        What do I know about Jerusalem

where miracles are made

to wait for sticks and stones?

                                        I might not hear the broken beat of that lost heart

if it was pounding there along the stream

whose sounding has the shape of tiny

thousands of passionate voices,

yet who can say it does not wait for us

along the banks, where no death can

outlive the pomegranate tree.

~

Anthony Bernini, from Manhattan’s Lower East Side, now lives and works as a poet in Brunswick, New York. His third volume of poetry, Selected Poems, Anthony Bernini, 2024, will be published next month.

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