ELLEN S. JAFFE

In this season of the White Witch

with frozen tears

crossing the face of the moon

remember the light

growing

like roses in the Arctic

a miracle 

un-looked for.

Ellen S. Jaffe

ELLEN S. JAFFE

For Jack Layton: State Funeral and Celebration, August 27, 2011

Dream no little dreams (Indigenous prayer, spoken at the funeral)

The bagpipes play their strange sad lament –
TV lets us see everything without being there:
Olivia Chow’s strained face, baby Beatrice,
the silent surging crowd.

This morning I cleaned my kitchen cupboards,
touched up the orange paint (Colorado Dawn) –
death does this, makes us clean, straighten, see, listen, and touch –
loved ones, flowers, household clutter.

Rise Up – Amazing Grace – Hallelujah –
O Canada, how can we lose this man, who gave a voice to the voiceless,
home to the homeless, a song of hope to people in need –
not a saint, but a very human being.

I regret I did not know you, met you
only once – an NDP meeting – shook your hand,
saw your smile. The political is personal,
the personal political – you knew this by heart.

Now you go from the ordinary world – bike paths,
jam sessions, elections – into the mystic...
Into The Mystic, where we can’t yet follow.
All our love goes with you – love is all
we need to keep your dreams alive.

Ellen S. Jaffe

ELLEN S. JAFFE

THE SUMMER THE CAT

The summer before the cat died,
she clumped up and down the stairs,
an old woman with arthritis,
and gave long, longing looks
into the garden. We took her outside,
let her brush against iris and daffodil,
snooze on the unmowed grass, let her dream
of chasing birds again, and climbing trees.
Then she woke up startled, needing to be loved.
We gave her cheesecake for her birthday,
chicken hearts, and vitamins.
All that summer, we remembered her as a kitten,
the colour of freestone peaches.
We didn’t know she’d live with us for years,
familiar and strange.

Next summer Peaches was dying,
though for months

ELLEN S. JAFFE

WATER CHILDREN

Buddhist women may sometimes have special prayers and shrines for babies
who are miscarried or aborted, whom they call “water children.”

I.
Water child, I bring you
chrysanthemums, ripe pears,
coloured ribbons to tie up my prayers.
You live, still, floating in some sunless sea
out of reach
out of reach.
I call you by name, but you
are too far away
and you have not yet learned
how to hear.

II.
I am the water child.
I am a lump of sugar dissolved in a bowl of green tea,
next to these white chrysanthemums and red ribbons.
I am a small pool, with one goldfish swimming in circles.
I am a humming-bird’s tongue, double-dipped in nectar.
Do not be sad.
I am not angry at you.
See, I will kiss you there, there,
nectar-wet kisses so another child
can begin.
My kiss is a tiny moth,
a mayfly that lives only one day.
Someday, you will forget me
but not yet, not now.
I need you to water the white chrysanthemums.
I need the red ribbon connecting us, heart to heart
as it did once,
while I lay sleeping underwater
inside your skin.

III.
I will sing you a lullaby,
braid the prayer-ribbons, red and green,
around this pear.
You could be the child inside the peach-pit
who accomplishes great deeds,
kills the raging monsters causing havoc
in the kingdom of my dreams.
Timimoto, Tom Thumb, Thumbelina
my bushel of tears
my water child.

Ellen S. Jaffe. Published in CV2, Summer 1999, and in Water Children (poems), Mini Mocho
Press: Hamilton, 2002.

ELLEN S. JAFFE

VIET NAM , August 11, 1966 
   

11 people die, 187 are wounded
it is a tragedy
because
they are civilian

11 people die, 187 are wounded
it is a victory
because
they are the enemy

11 people die, 187 are wounded
it is an atrocity
because
they are ours

skin off the labels,
taste the darkness beneath
ask a leg if it is civilian
an arm if it is the enemy
an eye if it is ours







Ellen S. Jaffe, published in Crossing Lines: Poets Who Came to Canada in the Vietnam War Era.  Ed. Allan Briesmaster and Steven Michael Berzensky, Seraphim Editions: Hamilton, 2008.
Ellen and Steven talked to Steve Paikin of TVO’s The Agenda about this book in February 2011 as a webcast feature. You can watch the interview, in which Ellen reads this poem, at http://bit.ly/gwR83k

Ellen S. Jaffe  
   Photo credit Roger V. Gilbert

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Born in New York City, Ellen studied in England for several years and came to Canada in 1979. She has lived in Hamilton since 2000, and feels at home here.  Her published books include Writing Your Way: Creating a Personal Journal; Water Children (poems); Feast of Lights: a young adult novel; and Syntymalauluja/Birth Songs (a bilingual poetry book, Finnish and English).  She has also published in anthologies and journals. Ellen has received literary awards from Arts Hamilton and has given many readings in Hamilton, including Lit Live, in Toronto and other Ontario locations, and across Canada. She has received writing and “artist in education” grants from the Ontario Arts Council, and works with Learning/Living Through the Arts, teaching writing in schools and community settings.  She has also written several plays; one, Promise You Won’t Marry Me, was produced by Black Box Fire’s EAS series in 2008.