World Poetry Cafe Proudly Presents Helen Bar-Lev from Israel!

World Poetry Café Radio Show hosts Ariadne Sawyer and Israel Mota welcomed the talented painter, artist and poet Helen Bar-Lev to the show at CFRO, 100.5 FM  www.coopradio.org

Also featured were e-poems by Lini Grol from Canada and Dr. Hadaa Sendoo from Mongolia. Music by Susan Cogan from her CD Gypsy Hill. To hear the show CLICK HERE!

Helen Bar-Lev was born in New York in 1942.  She holds a B.A. in Anthropology.  She has lived in Israel for 42 years and has held over 90 exhibitions of her landscape paintings, 33 of which were one-person shows.  Her poems and artwork have appeared in numerous online and print anthologies.  Collections: Cyclamens and Swords and other poems about the land of Israel, and The Muse in the Suitcase, both with Johnmichael Simon, illustrated by Helen.  In Moonlight the Sky Will Slide with Katherine L. Gordon.  EVERYTHING TODAY, a not-what-you-expect book of poetry about colours with her colour illustrations, is Helen’s latest collection and a new book of alphabet love letters is in preparation.  Helen is Assistant to the President of Voices Israel group of poets in English www.voicesisrael.com  and Senior Editor of Cyclamens and Swords Publishing, www.cyclamensandswords.com  She lives in Metulla, Israel with her poet-partner Johnmichael Simon.  Her two children and four grandchildren live not far away. www.helenbarlev.com

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Between the Banal and the Eternal

A border of boulders has been erected
to prevent the orchard from falling into the valley
and it is here that we stand
lost in its silence,
looking down on the land,
on its fields and its fish ponds,
on this wealth of earth
in the warmth of its summer

Almost-ripe apples bulge on their branches,
nectarines too, large but leaden,
wait for sweetness to seep in

Here is the real world, up in these orchards
and below in the valley, human-free and serene,
forgotten by a civilization which has chosen
to conglomerate into jittery cities,
to rise higher and higher in impossible structures,
looking down through glass and window planters
at congestion and frustration
in robotic symbiosis, at clones of themselves

While here in the only reality
the meaning of existence is written
in the parchment of its orchards
in the richness of its fields,
the fullness of its fishponds,
the purity of its breath,
sweet as peace

In a world that hovers
between the banal
and the eternal
as the sun sets
in the heat
of a solstice eve

© 6.2008 Helen Bar-Lev