Poems about Dragon Fruit, Daily Bread, Enlightenment and Memories

 

DRAGON FRUIT AWARENESS

              —for Ian, after Amtrak ride from Arizona

Enlightenment is like the taste of dragon fruit—

refreshing, neither sweet nor sour.

It feels just right when you know if all—

the whys, the therefores. The “Is God evil

since there’s evil all around us?” And

“Where’s God?”—”Omnipresent”—

Spinoza said— “There’s nothing

that is not God.” Or, to put it bluntly,

“everything is divine.”

You say dragon fruit tastes boring,

it tastes like nothing. So does awareness,

neither sad nor happy. You know it all

and you know nothing—

except that the lifeforce of trees

is a million zillion times stronger

than the most powerful weapons

that humans make—except that

the nuclear power of children’s

laughter can break the hardened

rock of an indifferent heart—

except... I cannot fully explain it.

It cannot be put into words.

You just have to taste it yourself.

Here’s a slice of the dragon fruit,

an afterimage of stars in midnight sky.

Its taste? Just right—

neither sweet, nor sour.

(C) 2024 by Maja Trochimczyk, published in California Quarterly 50:2, Summer 2024

                       

I've had several theological discussions with my atheist youngest son, Ian, while my spiritual beliefs went through a complete transformation. Like him, I was an atheist in my youth, but I converted to Catholicism and was baptized as an adult, at 30 years old. Then, after years of emigration and trauma, and the death of my Mother who was a lapsed Catholic admiring Buddhism and talking to plants, I slowly drifted away from dogma, while keeping the cultural affiliation. I've reached a personal awareness about spirituality, cosmos, and my place on this earth that includes reincarnation, each incarnated episode - a new lesson in living well in the body, living well in the material world, and finding the immaterial values of love, gratitude, wisdom and compassion far more important than anything made of dense matter... Inspired by many others, I wrote my own prayers, designed my own meditations, and found footing on my own path - that still involves Catholic traditions and the acceptance of the Commandments as the immutable spiritual law for humans on this planet... Did you notice that Buddhists have the same moral principles as Christians and Jews? - Do not murder, do not steal, do not lie, honor your parents and do not be promiscuous, swayed by desire...

Back to poetry, then. I decided to publish some food-inspired poems after hearing Hilda Weiss read a beautiful poem with these enchanting lines about the evening sky: "...it darkens to blueberry, blackberry, sweet juice of the night..." What a lovely metaphor!  So I thought of publishing these poems together in one post... I also considered the ample pomegranate poems, but then these are for the fall not for the spring, so I'll share them at some other time. 

It is my unique task, in this life, to capture, describe and preserve experiences from my life, and from the complicated lives of my extended family in Poland.  If I do not write it all down, it will be all forgotten... 

ON THE BAKING OF RYE BREAD

I. 

For us, it is all about bread.

It is always about bread. The daily bread.

The sourdough Grandma made in a wooden bowl

baked in a wood-fired oven of dancing flames

and black-sooted pots on concentric metal rings

that could be moved to cover the flames of the stove.

I watched this magic with wide-open eyes

waiting for the bread, hidden far within the dark maws

of the oven until it came out.  Round loaves,

with thick crust around soft warm slices, 

slathered with home-made, melting butter -

add a glass of raw milk, cold from the kanka

chilled in the well overnight - and voila! 

A perfect breakfast, served with the clacking

of storks in the wagon-wheel nest on the pine-top.

The sourdough bowl, a heirloom from great, great, great

grandma, was never washed - a bit of dough left each time 

as starter for the next week's baking of the bread.

II. 

For us, it is all about bread. The rough rye bread 

with bran my Great Grandma baked for her son,

my Mom's uncle, a priest imprisoned in Dachau.

He sent instructions in censored letters with Hitler stamps - 

All is good, so good - each slice to be saturated with lard

in an ugly, sticky mess no thieves would touch.

When guards rifed through packages from home, 

cakes, wheat rolls and treats would disappear, but this? 

Dark bread of survival, fat and rye, kept him alive

through endless experiments on his lungs. 

Was it good luck? Was it bad luck? 

To live unable to breathe without coughing? 

For two decades after five years in hell?

I do not know, I do not read cursive German. 

My aunt showed me his letters last summer. 

Each family, each nation, has its memories of trauma and bliss.

Far in Asia, it is all about rice. Rice paddies, rice paper, 

steaming bowls of plain, unsalted, white rice... 

For us, it is all about bread, the daily bread. 

(c) 2025 by Maja Trochimczyk

This is a new poem based on my own and family memories. In the first part, I conflated the memories of watching my maternal Grandma Maria Wajszczuk mix dough for bread in her "untouchable" breadmaking wooden bowl, kept, with a bit of sourdough starter left in the bowl to continue baking, covered with a linen cloth, in a closed room that kids could not enter. There, jars of preserves were kept - "spizarka." The starter my Grandma used seemed to be as old as the bowl itself, passed on by generations of bread makers.  The bread, baked on Saturday, was to last for a week, two huge round loaves. Later, Grandma used that bowl for making yeast-dough for cakes, and bought bread in the store, so the ancient "starter" sourdough was lost. . . 

The second image, of the stove with iron rings to cover or uncover the flames, was from the home of my paternal Grandma, Nina Trochimczyk. It was my job to keep the temperature of the stove even when cooking strawberry confiture. I had first to start the fire with a sliver of resin-saturated pine wood, and small twigs plus paper, and then to add wooden logs one by one, making sure the fire is neither too large nor too small. Plenty of time for watching the flames! I also loved Grandma Nina's home-made butter and even tried to learn how to beat fresh cream into butter in her wooden box (round vase shape with a beater inside). It was too hard, I gave up after a minute or two. The freshly baked bread for breakfast. There is nothing better! But I hated the warm milk "fresh from the cow" that still smelled of the cow. I enjoyed it only after it was chilled overnight in the well - in a sealed metal container, lowered into water on a chain. Bread and butter with milk - you do not need anything else for breakfast! 

The second poem describes a discovery about family history I made during my 2023 travel to Poland. My Aunt, Barbara Miszta, nee Wajszczuk, my Mom's sister, showed me the family documents she kept, including a stack of over 20 letters from the Concentration Camp in Dachau, written in 1940-1945 by her uncle, my great uncle Feliks Wajszczuk, a Catholic priest first imprisoned in Auschwitz and then in Dachau, along with his cousin Karol, also a priest. 

Father Feliks Wajszczuk was the brother of my Grandpa Stanislaw, and wrote to his mom, my Great Grandma, who baked his bread, dipped each slice in molten lard, and send packages to Dachau. His cousin, Father Karol Leonard Wajszczuk (1887-1942), was imprisoned in Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen and martyred in Dachau. He was the son of Piotr, the brother of my great grandpa Franciszek Wajszczuk, the chairman of the Trzebieszow village. 

http://www.drelow.siedlce.opoka.org.pl/wajszczuk/meczenstwo_e.htm

I previously mentioned this story of bread, the bread of survival in the title poem of the Rainy Bread collection, added to the volume's second edition, that I kept revising.  

https://moonrisepress.com/trochimczyk---rainy-bread.html

https://moonrisepress.blogspot.com/2021/04/the-rainy-bread-poems-from-exile-by.html

After translating it into Polish and presenting it at a conference in Bialystok's Sybir Museum, I published in CSPS Poetry Letter no. 3 of 2024:

https://www.californiastatepoetrysociety.com/2024/10/poetry-letter-no-3-of-2024-autumn-part.html

≡ THE RAINY BREAD ≡

~ for Grandma Nina and Grandma Maria, 

because they baked delicious bread

Even if it softened, it fell into the mud

you need to rinse the slice. When it dries out —

it can be eaten.

And this round, fragrant loaf,

which Grandma baked with sourdough?

One bread loaf for a week — it was the best

with cream and sugar crystals.

And this moist, whole-rye bread baked with honey? 

Delicious with butter and — more honey.

After each bite, take a sip of cold milk.

And the war bread, made from leftover, dirty flour?

Worms removed through a sieve. With bran,

sawdust — even a pebble can be found

among grains of sand. But, there it is.

Finally, the bread from the parcels sent 

to Father Feliks, Mom’s uncle in Dachau.

It’s so ugly — no one would steal it.

Whole rye flour, thick slices saturated with lard — 

Today we know: microelements and calories, 

A guarantee of surviving five years of torture.

Give us today our daily bread —

    the daily bread —

            the rainy bread —

                    the bread of life —

                                      bread

photo by Maja Trochimczyk

On Holy Happiness, Mothers and Good Words for 2025

Giotto, The Nativity fresco, Natività, Date: c.1311 - c.1320

Location: Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi, Assisi, Italy

It's been a while since I visited the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi, Assisi, Italy, in 1988 I think... It was during the group pilgrimage led by my Godmother Sister Eia and parish Priest of St. John the Baptist Cathedral in Warsaw. I was so preoccupied with seeing the tiny shed of St. Francis's own chapel placed right in the middle of an enormous and ornate cathedral, so simple and so out of place among all this opulence, that I didn't even notice the amazing frescoes by Giotto. Here, the focus is on the mother and the baby swaddled in white clothes, held up admiringly by her outstretched arms, and adored by a humble cow and a donkey. Two groups of six angels hover inside the stable. St. Joseph's sits, worried ,on the ground in the left corner (well, they have no money, nor a decent place to live in, and the baby is actually not his, so what is he to do?). Another angel tells two frightened shepherds of a large floc of sheep the Good News. Below, in the center, two women wash and dress another, purely human baby without a gold halo of holiness (at first I thought it could have been an earlier scene with Jesus? but this baby has no aureole!). Finally, two choirs of angels hover in the midnight indigo amidst a desolate mountainous landscape. 

Mother Mary raises up her baby and directly looks at her son, without paying attention to either the angels or animals around her.  Madonnas do know something we do not... as I wrote in an old poem, inspired by a different image of a mother and her baby, a Gothic sculpture Madonna of Krużlowa.

Seeing Madonnas at the National Museum

Gothic Madonnas 

with down-cast eyes

demurely

look within—

the infinity of love

spreads out 

the galaxies of laughter

amidst nebulae of bliss

happy overabundance

marks their cheeks

with a half-smile

of knowing

Maja Trochimczyk, published in Into light (2016)

Madonna of Krużlowa from the National Museum, Kraków

The woman and her newborn baby are admired by "dumb animals" and angels first, while people are  too worried, too preoccupied with their own troubles and things, to notice the miracle of birth. Another person entered the world, opening up endless possibilities of creating and changing the world they visited. Thus, the Divine arrives, noticed and cherished first by nonhuman creation and spiritual beings from beyond, but invisible to always too-busy humans.... All these birds singing outside my window since the morning, all the trees stretching their leaves to catch sunlight or dropping them in a flurry of gold and carmine, so the bare trees can go to sleep for the winter. , , 

While Giotto's Nativity does not have a huge ray of light falling onto the baby from the heavens above (see below the drawing by Nicholas Skaldetvind for a modern interpretation of this Orthodox trope), it carries an important message of the enormous significance of mothers, motherhood, giving birth and babies in our word. Without this miracle of human-divine co-creation none of us would be here. The two women bathing and dressing the baby beow express this message ceary. We, all born of mothers, should cherish and appreciate the miracle that motherhood and childbirth are! living in strange times when a good messages are twisted and holy happiness of birth distorted or destroyed

Nativity by Nicholas Skaldetvind 

Even if we are non-Christian and unable to believe in or need "redemption" by Christ, the lamb of God, we are still able to cherish and admire the courage and perseverance of his Mother, who gave birth in a stable, and admired the baby, no matter how poor and displaced they were. The magic of incarnation took place right there and then. There is no reason to look back or forward and be worried by what was or what could be. In this magic moment of welcoming a new life into the world, nothing matters but the present - the baby and the light it brings. 

Timelessness

Yes, there is time

Yes, there is weight

of the rocks on the skin 

of the earth making

it harder to breathe 

for the beast of eons

Yes, there are clouds

Yes, there is air

cut with wispy stripes

of whiteness wishing,

willing itself into being,

into solid forms that 

dissolve in the merest 

breeze, flee into nothing

Yes, there we are

Yes, matter stays

atoms, prions, electrons 

dance in an endless cycle 

of DNA spirals, molecules, 

blades of grass and gravel

Yes, there is time to watch, 

to catch the transient beauty

of living in red harmony 

blood circling in our veins,

rock dust changing into stars

Maja Trochimczyk, from Into light (2016)

My two favorite Christmas tree decorations, lace snow star from Poland 

and a handmade felt poinsettia bloom by my daughter.

To me being born and raised an atheist, though converted to Catholicism at the age of 30, Christmas is the ultimate family and motherhood celebration. It is about mothers, babies, the magic of birth and new life. But also about preparing fantastic feasts at home... it is also quite childish with a the materialistic gifts and Santa stories - we never had those in Poland, no stockings no fireplaces... one gift each at Wigilia dinner on Christmas Eve... But the tree remained with its ornaments and lights at east to February, through the Carnival season, or even all the way to Ash Wednesday, sometime in March, at the true beginning of spring. 

If Jesus was born in the desert town under palm trees, why do we have fir trees for his birthday? That's Christianity in action - adapting to its northern European sites and their landscapes. Snow-stars on my tree and Santa's sled pulled by reindeer also stem from this adaptation. Santa, Mrs. Santa, the elves, the North Pole factory of toys are all quite cute, but while shifting the focus of Christmas away from the baby in the manger and the sweet Mother singing lullabies to accumulating tons of things via chimney delivery we did lose a lot - the focus on the miracle of life experienced in childbirth, and the primacy of the Mother giving birth, in that process. The female Mrs. Santa is just a housemaid, cleaning and serving meals to her tired husband. Mary is the Mother of God, Bogurodzica. Which icon of femininity is better for women to follow and admire?  Yes I do love my Christmas tree and colorful decor on my mantelpiece - but yes, I also have a small nativity scene carved from olive wood in the Holy land....

If we are observant enough, we can see timelessness in the limitations of time. If we are observant enough we can notice all the immense effort by unseen forces to twist and distort meaning of words, of mothers, of motherhood, of babies, of birth...  

Bishop John F. Harrell (also past president and current treasurer of the California State Poetry Society)  captured the problem of words in a brief poem published in the Spring 2017 issue of the California Quarterly. 

Recovering What Is Unclean

The words slip glibly, cleverly from my lips

And I am therefore sure I have won the day;

But my words are like feathers

From a pillow cut open in the wind.

They go off down corridors, paths and highways

On journeys so tortuous and tangled I can never follow.

If the words are true and just, and wise and kind,

I am fine with never knowing where they wander;

But if they are not true and just and wise,

Or especially not kind,

How will I ever snatch the feathers back to me?

John F. Harrell, from California Quarterly, spring 2017.

As John wrote, "The image of the pillow cut open in the wind was told to our class by one of the nuns who taught us the catechism in an old quonset hut at the edge of the bluffs by the Newland House in Huntington Beach back in the 1950's. It's still relevant, I think."  Obviously the meaning is Christian, but I found a similar thought in a non-Christian, spiritual text by Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements. 

These four "agreements with myself" are based on Toltec teachings and summarize the principles of "right living" and proper conduct that so many other commandments, virtue teachings and catechisms capture... If one way does not work, try another, if the door is closed, go through the window...

• Be impeccable with your word
• Do not take anything personally
• Do not make assumptions
• Always do your best

So the four "Words" for the New Year 2025 capture the virtues of courage and moderation, justice and wisdom, or, to express it differently, prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. We are talking here of  integrity, fairness, detachment, dedication.  I have written a poem about these virtues in 2007, in a set of poems dedicated to my Franciscan Godmother Elia (as in Elijah, the prophet). 

The Cornerstone of the Soul

Fortitude:

Keep smiling. Grin and bear.

Prudence:

Choose wisely. Think and be there.

Temperance:

Don't take more than your share.

Justice:

Do what's right, what's fair.

The Four Cardinal Virtues:

The cornerstone of the soul.

Once you've mastered the steps,

New ones appear:

Faith: You are not alone . . .

Hope: And all shall be well . . .

Love: Where we are.

From Glorias & Assorted Praises, 2007. https://www.trochimczyk.net/glorias.html

Another  four "Good Words" for the New Year 2025, are found in a newer poem

On Squaring the Circle

It is a simple square that contains the circle —

four ideas, four words —

— Sorry — Forgive — Thank — Love —

No need for explanations, 

long winding roads of words

leading into the arid desert 

of heartless intellect, auras 

of geometric shapes floating above 

your head — a scattered halo 

of squares, sharp-edged cubes

prickly triangles, and hexahedrons

No, not that. Instead let us find 

the cornerstone. Simplicity.

Sorry — to erase the past

Forgive— to open a path into the future

Thank— to suffuse the way, each moment 

with the velvet softness of gratitude

Love — to find a pearl unlike any other,

a jewel of lustrous shine — incomparable, 

dazzling, smooth, pulsating sphere

A dot on the horizon grows

as you, step by step, come closer 

until you enter into the shining

palace without rooms

where inside is outside, 

the circumference is in the point, 

the point in the circumference—

where movement is stillness 

and stillness dances within —

traveling to a myriad planets, 

suns, galaxies, with unheard-of 

velocity, everywhere at once

Love everyone — Respect everything

*     *    * 

So that’s how you square a circle

By Maja Trochimczyk, published in Into Light (2016), reprinted in Altadena Poetry Review (2018)

And since this text started from Nativity and babies, here's the favorite photo of my grandson Adam in 2017 as a baby Santa... and, best wishes

​May your heart be light as a Feather

​May your Smile be bright as the ​Sun

​May your days be sweetened with ​laugher

Happy Holy days of ​loving kindness and fun​!