The Natural World Explored: Introducing the Poetry of Deborah Leipziger
Welcome to the sensual world—the world of Deborah Leipziger’s poems, where the natural is born in the body, in the earth, in religion, in the mind and in the poet’s imagination. Leipziger magically braids these all together, letting us know we are a part of all things in this universe and they are a part of us.
Love Song for my Body Listen and you will hear my rainforests, shaking canopy of nesting hummingbirds The waves of my body release shells, oval and spiral If the body is mostly water then here are my archipelagos, bays and canals Meu corpo with its apertures tasting the world Follow my river veins to their tributaries and deltas Trace the map of my body hemispheres and countries echoing of shell People say that “Refugee” is a first language and then a spoken language comes second but I say my body is my first language, my consonants and vowels speaking myself into being
Grief is a Goddess
Follow grief
into her cave.
Even in the dark
notice the arc of her cave,
how her amphora fill
with stalactite drops.
Listen to their rain,
how their falling echoes
in the pools of water,
how they long to brim.
Meet the ancestors here
in their place of dwelling.
The grief collects
in iridescent vases.
All that is asked of you is to notice
the droplets on your skin.
Absorb grief’s caveats,
her admonitions.
All that she asks is quiet.
Witness. 
Migration Memory
The hatchlings belong in the sea.
Burning sand stretches out, taut like fabric on a loom.
Heat bleaches the day.
The Turtle Mother returned to the ocean.
Across footprints crabs driftwood.
The hatchlings must make their own way to the sea.
One by one.
Following the light horizon and white crests of waves.
Each turtle knows the direction to the sea.
“Let Nothing Disturb You” After Teresa of Avila This day has its sanctity You, too, are sacred Imagine a cocoon for yourself Where there is peace Imagine a country Where all have rights Imagine what wholeness Would be like Imagine a well Brimming Let nothing disturb you Rather open yourself Into the spaciousness Imagine for yourself a new beginning What I am saying is this poem Is your permission To be whole and strong And patient For I have the watch.
How Miracle is a Verb The two folded together inside me became each other’s amulet Your body can do the seemingly impossible My twins have made me brave You are Wonder Woman and Aphrodite So lonely you might cry from fatigue You will learn to jettison perfection to marvel at the knowingness of twins How miracle is a verb How in Dutch, a tweeling a two-ness double bonded is a universe
Shell Cities For the Calusa, a tribe from the Everglades, Florida, USA We cannot forget what we never knew -- pyramids made of lightning whelks, covering tombs fossil remnants below, swirl of maclurites, whorl of ammonites. We do not know what you called your people. The Spanish named you Calusa. You were a Kingdom. You created islands out of shells -- creating land out of whelk, terra-forming. From hundreds of millions of shells you created a landscape of water-bound towns. We walk on cities of shell, unaware of the Earth that holds us, the buried stories that carry us forward and backward in time.
Map of Amber
Know that you hold and carry
all of the countries, scars, and places
All of the faces are reflected here
the dark and light of translucent places
Borders bleed over each other,
over forests and ancient places
Sap spills down branches
dripping onto the forest’s hidden places
Injured trees bleed resin
to seal the wounded places
Hardening and trapping traces
of petals, insects and trampled places
Leavings of the frozen sea
antenna hair and wood fruit in buried places
Held in the amber are filaments
of flowers from unknown places
Countries change color, change names,
the forest preserves the remembered places
Each of these spaces and countries
has marked you with its indomitable places
My linden landscape buries
bee stings in forgotten places
Deborah Leipziger is an author, poet, and advisor on sustainability. Born in Brazil, Ms. Leipziger is the author of several books on sustainability and human rights. Her collection of poems, Story & Bone, was published in 2023 by Lily Poetry Review Books. Her work appears in numerous anthologies, including Tree Lines: 21st Century American Poems. Her awards include a Creative Community Fellowship from the Jewish Arts Collaborative. She was selected to serve as a Scholar at Yeztirah's Inaugural Conference in Asheville, North Carolina (2023). Deborah has had residencies at T S Eliot House, the Vilna Shul, and the Center for Spirituality, Dialogue and Service at Northeastern University. Hadassah magazine selected Story & Bone for its Shabbat Bookshelf in honor of National Poetry Month 2024. Deborah founded the Lexicon of Change, a guide to social and ecological transformation.
Interview Questions:
Five Tiny Delights
1. Wandering through art museums
2. Learning a new word
3. Glass that has been made smooth by the ocean
4 Georgia O’Keefe paintings
5. Learning a new word
Five Jewish delights
1. Jewish poetry
2. Blessings
3. The Ne’ila service
4. The color of the Dead Sea
5. Making challah
Deborah is a wonderful poet. I would love to take a workshop with her. Thanks for featuring her in Judith!
Such beautiful poems!!