NVN Friday: MY WIFE SENDS ME A VIDEO OF ISRAELI ARABS AND JEWS SINGING “SOMEWHERE” FROM “WEST SIDE STORY” AND ASKS ME TO WRITE A POEM
by Dick Westheimer
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The song sung in three tongues swells and descends with the beat Bernstein intended, “Someday” in English the tenors hold every note as they would hope. In Hebrew, full throated soprano voices sing, “We'll find a new way of living,” followed in muted harmony, Arabic singers whisper about “a way of forgiving.” The music fills me with the stuff of hope, of a new way of living and then I remember the plot, the Sharks and the Jets didn’t make their lousy world and Tony always had to die. And as the the music fades Tony rasps, “I didn’t believe hard enough.” But then I remember Maria’s final note was sung over the top of a major chord.
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Dick Westheimer lives in rural southwest Ohio. He is winner of the 2023 Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, a Rattle Poetry Prize finalist, a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee. His poems have appeared or upcoming in Whale Road Review, Rattle, OneArt, Abandon Journal, Stone Poetry Quarterly, and Minyan. His chapbook A Sword in Both Hands, Poems Responding to Russia’s War on Ukraine is published by SheilaNaGig.