CEO of major public companies. Recipient of numerous professional certifications and awards. Holds degrees in business and international law.
Poet. Honors include 2009 New York State Senior Poet Laureate Award; the Ellen LaForge Foundation Poetry Prize published by Grolier of Cambridge; Sketchbook; the Voice of the Bards and the 2010 Award of Excellence from the Poetry Institute of Canada.
Publications include: Life Through My Glasses (Trafford/Penguin Publishers, June 2012), a collection of contemporaneous poetry, including universal observations of nature, ancient storytellers, gastronomy and biographies–usually ending with a touch of sardonic humor--awarded The Publisher’s Gold Seal of Literary Excellence; Poems From My Drawer (2007); Poems For The Universe (2009). http://www.HerbSiegel.org
Place of Birth: New York, New York Residence: Long Beach, New York
(A Triptych inspired by the complex beauty of the double helix of DNA to which we are all beholden. Parallel poems are read separately then unified)
NATURE LIFE AND LOVE
Ancient trees live with their protean shapes,
empty and stripped of leaves that
prod our images of winter
AS THE SEASONS COME AND GO
indistinct residents of earlier times
are only a breath away from the here and now,
OCCASIONALLY PAUSING TO NOTICE ME
among throngs of sibling perennials,
they stubbornly reject departing by wintry
napping awaiting the promised but as yet unborn spring
when Mother Nature is pregnant.
WHILE I SEARCH FOR MOMENTS OF PASSING GRANDEUR,
New leaves arrive, fulfilling ancestral promises of renewal
long since made to these towering residents of our past
WHEN YOU COME TO ME AS SPRING COMES TO AGELESS TREES
to once again arouse life as a lasting and vindicating legacy
reminiscent of eons long since past when first born leaves
nurtured and thrived on dormant trunks, now restored and fertile.
Ah, spring! You are to trees, as love is to man.
Your captivating essence refreshes the gift of life’s force
WITH THE SUCCULENCE AND SPLENDOR OF IMMORTALITY
AS OUR SPIRITS CONVERGE.
But what of love?
Another atavistic iterative gift of revelry?
Just atavistic from a remote ancestry?
Yet ever enriching by perennial newnessv
like limbs of a tree rippling outward year in, year out,
I LIE AWASH IN ENERGY PASSIONATELY EXCHANGED,
PEERING INTO MY SOUL, SEEKING REMORSE, FEAR,
JOY, AND WONDER AT THIS AS YET UNTESTED
BUT WILLINGLY OFFERED EPIPHANY,
to nourish with recklessness and abandon
satisfying ancestral promises of re-creation.
When love is right, a need enriched
to stand tall against all ravages
ever reaching for betterment and renewal from nature.
Who, but for the delicate balance of these life forces, has other lasting virtues?
Trees and love breathe life into others, imbue spirits, please the eye,
captivate the senses, protecting life from ravaging elements.
Trees! Extensions of our beings or is our need for love theirs?
WITH STRONG BONDS TIME CAN GROW AND FLOURISH
IN A WORLD BATHED IN SUNSHINE OF LIFE YET NEVER
FILLS THE INNER BEAUTY OF OUR SOULS.
Caregivers of the ages
always there, as the sun or the moon
never changing, never wanting,
bending to the winds, admiring the rain,
procreating in eternal perfection
WE ARE LOVERS STRIVING FOR ETERNAL PERFECTION
IMMERSED IN EACH OTHER'S KINDNESS, WARMTH, AND PASSION.
These, the timeless metrics of perpetual life,
like no other on earth honed by the ages
with beauty and grace, soundless yet erect
never in need, yet always needed
UNLIKE LONELY TREES NEEDING NO ONE
YET NEEDED BY EVERYONE, WE ENDURE
WHEN THE FIRES OF LIFE TURN TO CINDERS
OF DESPAIR. RENEWAL COMES SLOWLY,
IF EVER, TO US UNLIKE TREES REBORN TO LAST EONS.
Nature simply exists
(HURRAH FOR NATURE)
LOVERS NEED OTHERS
(VIVA LIFE AND LOVE)
Herbert Siegel