Tuesday, May 16, 2023

Not All About Roses... Dreams, Gardens, and Clearing Karma in the Spring


 How vivid are your dreams? Mine are so intense that I'm sometimes completely disoriented when I wake up and find myself in my house in California instead of where the night-time adventures took me. I was so busy and now I'm resting? That's so strange... I think and start another day.  

Dreams are great for poems, though so I thought I'll write down the two dreams I had and make them into poems of sorts, too long and narrative for journal submission, but just right for the wordy blog.


On Friday after a Dream of Cleaning Vases


I ran away from demons, chasing me through crowded streets.

I cleaned off layers of black paint from an antique vase 

I inherited from my parents. See? It's smooth surface glistens 

as cobalt phoenixes dance in white, porcelain sky.


Let's arrange flowers you brought in this graceful vase -

hyacinth, irises and daisies, a pastel bouquet on clouds of sweet alyssum. 


No? How about a rose rainbow from my garden? Compassion, 

Yellow Mellow, Double Delight and French Perfume. Do not forget

the charms of decades-old Love at First Sight! Its scarlet petals lined with silver

remind you that nothing is ever simple. Everything changes. Nothing lasts. 


Let's walk down the garden path scented with orange blossoms.

Forget the lilacs of your youth. Let's smell the roses, shall we? 

The hybrid teas have a slight flavor but here's the Grande Dame - 

so magnificent in her fragrant, magenta gown.


Tired? Let me serve you Armenian tea - honey-hued, translucent liquid, 

steaming from the delicate China cup. Let's raise a toast

to timeless values. Let's celebrate togetherness and peace. 


There was a time to run. Time to stop running. 

There is a time to say "Enough!"  No pasaran. 

They shall not pass. When you say "No" 

They have to listen. It is the Cosmic Law, you know. 


Do not give up. You'll win your life back through loyalty and strength. 

Balance  your courage with the virtue of restraint. Hone justice 

with ageless wisdom. Do not be cruel. Always stay kind. 

Be careful - don't break the crystal core of your new heart!


How hard the lessons! How many failures haunt the past!  

Do not look back.  Regrets will turn you into a fierce demon. 

Breathe deeply, slowly in my vibrant garden. 

Live now, drink tea from Grandma's favorite, gold-rimmed cup!


May 8, 2023


The poem is inspired by a dream of washing a black-painted vase that slowly reveals its Chinese pattern of dancing phoenixes, blue on white. It seems like magic, removing dirt of the past, accumulated through generations, or done on purpose out of spite, to reveal such timeless, elegant beauty. There is a deeper meaning to the dream - the cleaning of ancestral karma, the hard work it takes to dissolve generations-old weight of ill emotions, regrets, despair. 

But then, there is the garden, birdsong and roses.  It's been my lifesaver in the plandemic, a refuge of serenity and beauty. I survived my bout of illness outside in sunlight, sweating it out while birds sang and orange blossoms filled the air with heavenly scent.  It is so important to be close to nature. Just enjoy life - of plants, birds, lizards, clouds. So much joy in ever leaf, every chirp and note of every winged creature. I was raised in a house with a garden, and loved going outside every day to watch the narcissus and daffodils sprout in their circles on the flowerbed, watch the golden forsythia bloom in an avalanche of petals, wait for the cherries to ripen, play with the willow branches, or read a book on the lawn.  Such simple, ageless delights. No TV, no fancy parties, just being alive in nature being alive, flowering and fruitful. 

When looking for a house in California I picked the one I've been living in for 25 years because of its large garden, fruit trees, and roses, so many patent roses planted back in the early 1950s, Four of these bushes are still alive, still blooming. A couple were "murdered" by a gardener whom I promptly fired - cut them down below the single bud, so the transplanted large-blossom hybrids could not grow back. These roses are "hybrid" because they grow from other roses' stronger roots.  At times the parent will try to bloom as well, shooting long branches out with small red flowers.  

The roses I inherited - Mister Lincoln, Compassion, Peace and Love at First Sight are still lovely, but not really fragrant. For delightful rose scents, I have to turn to the roses I planted - French Perfume, Mellow Yellow, Pop Art, and Grande Dame, Firefighter... The last two are quite alike, despite their names - dark wine-red in hue, huge double flowers, with rounded petals, more magenta in tone than wine of the Grande Dame.  Who would have thought that Firefighter would not smell of smoke and sweat? The Mellow Yellow is not as extraordinarily beautiful as the Oregold of darker, richer yellow and almost no scent. But the fragrance! I decided never to buy roses without rose scent again. 

Colors are interesting, too. Many of my roses are of a single tone - Mister Lincoln of dark, velvety wine-red, Electron and Compassion of clear, vivid pink, Mellow Yellow of creamy, sunny hue, the wine-red-magenta Grande Dame and Firefighter, and of course the pure white Iceberg floribunda bush, that guards the door with its year-round profusion of delicate blooms. 


Charmed by the Love at First Sight I inherited, I looked for two-tone roses and found Peace and Chicago Peace of white, light yellow and pink, Double Delight of white with dark pink edges, Deep Purple with burgundy edges on purple blooms, Rainbow Sorbet of yellow, orange, pinkish red changing in hues as they age, and, my most recent discovery, a fragrant Pop Art, its yellow petals striped with pink. The best of the best - both lovely and fragrant!  I have not kept the tags from these bushes, so I may have forgotten - one bush with pink-yellow-white blossoms seems to be Dream Come True. Another with soft-pink huge flowers = is it Carefree Wonder? 

This year I added some blue to my palette - small stems of szafirki and mid-size blue-yellow Japanese iris. Strong rusty orange in bunches of gazania compete with miniature carnations in white, pink and amaranth. White and pink African daisies I bought for 1$ each are still filling in the palette.  I'm very sensitive to color, so much so that I do not like black and white films, and do not go to see exhibits of drawings, which, in black and white are simply boring. But add color and the image explodes!  So here's another, more colorful dream, that went from jewel hues into pure gold and diamond of intense, joyful light. My life seems to follow the same trajectory. 



On Sunday, After a Dream of Jewel Lights


I remember us, together, flying upwards through the infinite 

lapis of cosmic expanse measured in constellations.

Intertwined in a tight embrace, we were one.  

Two halves of a divine apple of energy - twirling, swirling 

in a feeria of jewel hues - ruby, emerald, sapphire. 


Oh, how I miss those timeless days, years, eras of untold bliss! 

Language was not needed. Transparent to each other, 

we shared thoughts i an instant of yes, always yes.


We crash-landed on a small, distant planet of green forests

 and aquamarine seas.  Everything became heavy, dense 

on this continent of eroding rocks and cold rains.

Separated, we looked for each other in life after life, 

we passed test after test of  unforgetting. 


Would you recognize me without the crown of cosmic jewels? 

Would I find you in an alien landscape of chaparral and muddy winter streams? 

How could I tell it is you, among the desert dust of degradation? 


Yes, always yes, I recognize you in the topaz eyes 

looking at me  with this irresistible energy of masculine 

desire, commanding me to do, what I do not want to do.

Would you still love me if I were an ancient crone?

Would I still love the demon you've become? 

Greedy and resentful, hungry for scraps of my affection, fucus, time? 


Oh how I yearn for our return to the interstellar realm 

of jewel lights. Purified through water, fire -  lost and found - 

we will ascend from ruby, emerald, sapphire

through the sphere of gold diamond rays

ever expanding into the luminous

intensity of grace.


Patience, patience is the key. 


May 8, 2023









 


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