Peter Waldor

Perfect Islamic Bliss

Four daisies
by the mosque window
when I look up
from prayer,
and blowing
from town
the smoke
of a guitar.
Simple daisies.
Simple.
The window
could be a painting.
The distant player
is practicing,
just practicing.

Insurance Man

All my life I dreamed
of being a shepherd,
not an insurance man.
A shepherd said,
the lord is my shepherd.
Shepherds always
want a shepherd.
Even the lord asks.

New Moon

The crescent thing
lolls on heaven.
A crescent is nothing.
It reminds of the joke
where a poor man
prays "Lord I am nothing"
and one Rebbe says to the other Rebbe
"Look who says he is nothing now!"

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Peter Waldor lives in New Jersey, where he works in the insurance business. These poems will appear in his first collection, due out from Alice James Books in fall 2007. contents | previous | next