leaves

These are poems about blood roses. The rose is a symbol of love and tendernesss, but it is also the color of blood …

Frantisek “Franta” Bass was a Jewish boy born in Brno, Czechoslovakia in 1930. When he was 11, his family was deported by the Nazis to Terezin, where the SS had created a hybrid Ghetto/Concentration Camp just north of Prague (it was also known as Theresienstadt). Franta lived there under terrible conditions for three years. He was then sent to Auschwitz, where on October 28th, 1944, he was murdered at age 14.

wind and sea—
the leaves we leave
for other generations
 
little by little—
the leaves line up
to be lifted by the wind
 
pure sky—
awakened to sound
of single leaf
 
trees and skies—
the generations grow
from leaf to leaf
 
running in the wind—
searching for “self”
in the veins of time
 
water and life—
a drop in the moon’s
midnight reflection
 
moon and sea—
the life force of Earth’s
wandering expression
 
step-by-step
across the plots

Successive years of falling leaves, as gold-
Enameled flowers flitter out, around
The garden nook, with simple stories told
To fragrant crowds at play on dampened ground.
 
This time we sipped a cup of coffee cold
And spoke of speckled, thinning hair once brown;
A crow called out, as if a black-winged scold
That hits its mark and pulls us twisting down.
 
Through God we came from chaos to earth and skies,
And painted all that’s dark a color bright,
As child-like wonder shows through gleaming eyes