Poetry Flash

Marcia Falk

Poems from The Sky Will Overtake You

The Muse Finally Speaks

You don't need me, she says.
The sky will overtake you—
a stunning event each time you step outside.
You do not have to call up the thousand configurations
of emptiness and cloud.
On its own, without the workings of your mind,
the sky will impart color and contour
to flatland, house, and hill.
Memory, imagination—they are nothing
compared to the sheer, simple fact of it:
the indelible, inviolate fact
of sky.

What Do You Have?

Not this earth, not even dust—
Not yours, caw invisible crows
like doors swinging shut

Not your memories, rising
and burning in the air
like leaf-dew in sun

Not your thoughts,
darting in and out
like hummingbirds in the blossoms

Only this bit of time,
like clouds unforming—
even as you point to it,

gone

Earth

See how it falls, unhurried,
between your fingers,
leaving traces of itself in the creases—

wood and acid, flower and metal
in the crescents of the nails.

See how, when you dig in its darkness,
it settles its weight in your hand,
at home with its child,

and how, when you lay it back
around the newly planted roots,
patting it down with the flat of your palm,

it leaves you again,
without resisting,

the way hair, skin, sight, mind
go, quietly, cell by cell,
so gently you can only imagine

to what soft bed, what body
you are being delivered.

These poems are from Marcia Falk's The Sky Will Overtake You, forthcoming from Scarlet Tanager Books.

Marcia Falk is widely known in the progressive Jewish world for her poetic recreations of Hebrew and English prayer. Her translation of the biblical Song of Songs is considered a modern classic; she has published book-length translations of modern Hebrew and Yiddish women poets. Her own poetry collections include This Year in Jerusalem, It Is July in Virginia, and My Son Likes Weather. These poems are from her soon-to-be-published collection, The Sky Will Overtake You. A lifelong artist, she began art classes as a child at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and later studied painting at the Art Students League. Her pastel drawing appears on the cover of The Sky Will Overtake You. More of her art, as well as excerpts from her books, can be viewed at marciafalk.com. Born and raised in New York City, Marcia Falk lives in Berkeley, California with her spouse, poet Steve Rood.

Author photo by Brian Miller, 2021.

— posted February 2025

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