Appreciating Naomi Replansky

A brilliant young filmmaker named Megan Rossman made a six-minute documentary of Naomi Replansky reading a few of her own poems when Replansky was only 100 years old. The film is still being played in art houses and film festivals, but I got permission from Rossman to show the documentary to Margie, and Margie was charmed by this woman from her own neighborhood. Now Replansky is 104 and still living in the Bronx, where she and Margie were both born and grew up. Margie listened with pleasure to each poem in the documentary and then performed the same poem for me, and their accents and ways of reading sound exactly alike. What a delight. Here's the one that starts the film:

GRAY HAIRS

Gray hairs
crowd out the black. 
Not one of them
brings me wisdom.

Wrinkles
provide no armor. 
I still quiver 
to anyone's dart. (1980)

I'm still in the grip of migraine and feeling rough, but I canceled my time with Margie last week because of it, and I felt I had to get back to her today. I collapsed when I arrived back home. 

There was a spectacular dawn this morning (Extra). It looked like the city was on fire.