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.
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.
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.
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:
≡ 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
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photo by Maja Trochimczyk
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