Martin Elster, who never misses a beat, was a long-time percussionist with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. Martin’s poems have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies in the U.S. and abroad. His honors include the 2022 Helen Schaible International Sonnet Contest winner, Rhymezone’s poetry contest, five Pushcart nominations, and a Best of the Net. A full-length collection, Celestial Euphony, was published by Plum White Press in 2019. Dogged: A Verse Novel is a collaboration between Martin and his writing partner, Joan Axelrod-Contrada.
One Summer Day
An allusion to Beethoven
While walking through the woods one summer day,
he glanced along a river, clear and bright,
saw bubbling notes like dappled fish at play,
and dashed them off that night by candlelight.
Meandering down coniferous-scented trails
where chickadees and tree frogs made such noise,
he didn’t hear a thing except the scales
and chords and cadences that were his toys.
He couldn’t hear the leaves in the aspen thickets,
the deer flies buzzing round his graying hair,
the sound of countless madly rasping crickets,
nor the peals of far-off thunder in the air.
Yet who can miss those leaves, that summer breeze,
that river rushing through his symphonies?
(Appeared in The Ekphrastic Review.)
The Art of Freezing
The art of freezing isn’t hard to master.
For tiny frogs as tough as I am, snow
or frost on naked skin is no disaster.
Winter’s icy fingers do not fluster
me in the least. Since I’ve no place to go,
the art of freezing isn’t hard to master.
I am a frog-cicle. When blizzards bluster
and icicles’ long fangs begin to grow,
their nudge on naked skin is no disaster.
My ticker, as if made of alabaster,
stops beating. Then when runnels start to flow,
I melt, for melting isn’t hard to master.
While thawing, though I’d love to do it faster,
my heart once more starts ticking. I’m a pro
at freezing and defrosting. No disaster!
And you, by probing me, will come by vaster
knowledge of saving organs. You will know
the art of freezing isn’t hard to master,
that snow on naked skin is no disaster.
(Appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily.)
Dihydrogen Monoxide
The molecules commingling in your glass
once swirled in clouds of interstellar gas,
surrendered to a leisurely collapse
and drenched a world whose pair of crystal caps
interns them under sleds and fleecy shoes,
while warmer zones allow them to infuse
the stems and stalks of your Kukicha tea
or trickle up your favorite apple tree.
A cornice softens on the Matterhorn,
hastens toward Green Lake to be reborn
a mirror amid the heights, evaporates,
condenses in a stretch of blue, then waits
for drops to fuse and fatten, fall and land
on forest, field or the parading band—
a rill of resonances drifting down
the central boulevard of some small town,
each drumming hand, each fifing lung, each brain
brimming with primeval, living rain.
This is the mail that has moved at near light-speed
which, on present-day Earth, is the absolute right speed.
Plenty of letters are carried by carriers
trudging through blizzards or barked at by terriers,
or transferred by horse or by truck or by freight train,
zipping like wind or delayed on a late train.
Yet now we’ve got streams of electrons that bucket
through cables in seconds from Nuuk to Nantucket.
Imagine a parcel transported by pigeon.
Now data, prodigious or scarcely a smidgen,
flies round the whole planet by pressing a button,
expressing a sentiment thoughtful or cuttin’.
The best thing about it? No paper keeps piling
and piling and piling in piles for filing.
But texting and texting? Too slow and too tiring!
Just pick up the phone. What’s so hard about dialing?
(Appeared in The Dirigible Balloon.)
A Proton’s Fate at the LHC
I gallop like billy-o down a long hall,
colossal and shaped like a ring,
though my body is so inconceivably small,
I am almost not even a “thing.”
With each revolution, I’m ever more zippy
till, nearly as speedy as light,
I boogie like nobody’s business—Yippee!—
feeling as light as a mite.
But what’s that in front of me coming head-on?
A proton? It looks just like me.
It’s zipping as fast as I’m zipping. We’re drawn
together. How could I foresee
another speed-racer? Can’t dodge him. Collision!
We shatter, and parts of us spatter
in sizes and forms I could scarcely envision,
and that is the end of the matter.
(Appeared in Star*Line in a slightly different version.)
The Galway Review 