Since the stream dried out, yucca is no longer blooming, and I cannot wade in ankle-deep water, I stopped going for walks in the Wash. How many times can you walk down the same path and not get bored? I got restless in front of my laptop one lovely, sunny afternoon when the sky was perfect sapphire or lapis-lazuli, so brilliant and the sun just became golden, painting the hills into hues of amber and linden honey.
A surprise was waiting for me among pungent bushes of sage and manzanita - some yucca stalks, dried and lifeless were perfectly golden in the setting sun. So a poem came back home with me from that peaceful walk.
Fall Yucca
Golden stems shine like beams of sunset
piercing the purple valley that sinks
into darkness under a soap-bubble sky.
The stems lean sideways, imperceptibly falling
- these are our leaning towers of Yucca in the desert
valley that I make my home. I breathe deeply, delighted
by the omnipresent sheen and sparkle of sonorous
cicadas that rush to surround me with their scintillating
songs of summer, before rains silence them into sleep.
Long, narrow yucca leaves gather at the stems
like supersonic star-beams meeting at one point
on the horizon, blurred by velocity of a Star Wars flight.
They burst out at dusk with a silvery glow
of moonlight - then detach from their drying stems
to crumble into the thick charcoal of the earth.
The yucca's white lily flowers have long turned into
bunches of seed-pods - waiting to fall and germinate
into spikes of sharp leaves that poke from the rocky soil
with a promise and a certainty of survival –
the next year's yucca. Shadows reveal sparks
of icy stars above me – I walk home, content.
My rock heart that I wrote a ballad about and kept placing on a little indent in a larger rock is gone, so I found another rock heart and placed it right there. This place I call the Rock Heart Valley, so it has to have its heart! Nearby someone put together a tall cairn of rocks, so I took a photo of it.
I'm not the only one here interested in rock art. someone else put together a spiral to walk into and outside. I did that and got dizzy from turning inwards at smaller and smaller angles, until the whole valley was rotating around me, standing transfixed under the sapphire sky.
The nights are cool these days, winter chill comes out right after sunset, though it still feels like summer in direct sunlight. Roses like it and after slumbering through the hottest months of the year, July through September, they finally started blooming again. I have several new, fragrant varieties to join the pink French Perfume that had as many as 30 roses simultaneously. The smaller bushes have one or two, but so pretty in their rainbow colors and delicate, intoxicating scents. Sometimes I stand in front of the rose bush and take 10-20-30 breaths of the rose perfume - aromatherapy done live! Here's a new poem about the two-color rose, cream inside, blush pink outside, called the Double Delight.
Double Delight
Gentle as dawn, clearing
the sky of midnight nightmares
my November rose smiles to herself
rearranging the bluh and pink crinoline
of petals folded into a heart –
her secret within
She tells me to laugh
and laugh again, overflowing
with childish joy, champaign bubbling
in a crystal – while the air around me –
is heavy with cries of panic, anguish, hate.
“What of the news?” you say,
“Who lived, who died, who suffered?”
I’m silent, exploring the inner landscapes
that only music knows – the infinity
of cellos, violins, and the lover’s gaze
locked in the key of brightness.
I'm grateful for my Double Delight, I'm grateful for my pomegranates, here filled with thank-yous in so many languages. Gratitude is the virtue of blessings.
Self-portrait with Leonardo at the Louvre, November 23, 2015.
And they said, aren't you afraid to go? To Paris? Now? After the explosions? Bloodied bodies in the streets? For Thanksgiving? This is how we show we are not afraid, we will not let them win, whoever they are, these men with guns, tall, strong-muscled men without love, with guns, always more guns. But I sought something else, something to be thankful for. The Louvre was there, waiting.
Oh, how we long
for the tender arms of mother -
safe touch of azure
And there is more, that other half smile of John the Baptist. Leonardo's mysterious twin.
look at the clouds
don't get distracted by things below
he says, pointing at the sky
Today, I'm thankful for paintings. Leonardo in black and blue made my day. And so did that flustered angel, excitedly bomb-diving the Blessed Virgin with the good news, hers and ours, the real Good News: Peace be with you. God lives in your heart. Look how surprised she is, how unprepared. Aren't we all? To know that there is only love, only One Love that links us, sentient beings, from the bee to the bison, from dolphin to the duck, with the cruel, violent humans hiding somewhere in-between? When will we feel that all human beings are part of us; that all trees grow our roots, all skylarks sing our songs?
Yes, I did see long guns in Paris. Groups of four or five soldiers in camouflage fatigues, walking along the umbrella lines waiting to get inside the Notre Dame Cathedral. Why did we stand for over an hour in the cold?
umbrellas blossom
on the cathedral square
without gunshots
Maybe to hear the bells ringing at noon, and, again at one o'clock.
a new hour -
cathedral bells are ringing
under clouded skies
The Cathedral waves of song bounce off the cobblestones spill on the rooftops stay still, watch shadows fle the bronze majesty of bells morning brightness rises in the rhythm of the ocean, caressing ancient mounds of cooled off lava at the edge of the dying world inside the rib-cage of a cathedral we learn to breathe in the beached whale of a building the city’s beating heart
(C) Maja Trochimczyk, October 19, 2013
Yes, I'm thankful for the cathedral. For the artisans who made its rosettes and stained glass windows,
I also thank the carpenters who built the walls of the Auberge des Deux Ponts near the Bibliotheque Polonaise on Ille de France, just around the corner from the Notre Dame. What a perfect, simple, elegant, place. With ten tables for two, and a harmony of sights and tastes.
I count my blessings when I walk around in the rain. It is such a pleasure to take in the sights, the sounds. The wind and the wings of seagulls gathering above an old lady who came to feed the swans on the shore of the Seine. The whole aviary showed up, uninvited, and started their pithy battles for the crumbs. I'm touched by the sight of the swans, and the one, oversized ugly duckling swimming nearby.
Yes, I'm grateful for the bread, the lady, and the swans. The violinist and artist Wanda Sobieska made hand-drawn illustrations for a new version of the Ugly Duckling, composed by Ken Woods and recorded by his ensemble. It took them two years to write a ten-minute tale. Was this time well spent? Of course.
grey feathers fly
the gang pecks and screeches
poor ugly duckling
But that turmoil was before the swan was aware who he really was: the majestic, glorious bird, of grace and beauty. A case of mistaken identity. Don't we all suffer from it sometimes? At all times? Do we know what are we here for? The contours of our lives outlined by heartbeats? The invisible links of affection? Shortcuts through time into the ever present, ever brilliant now? Are we thankful?
What are we thankful for?
Today, I'm grateful for music. My travel to Paris is for a reunion of scholars, connected by an unlikely subject of a pianist-composer long gone, Maria Szymanowska died in 1831, why are we still talking about her? What is there in the life, in the music of this lovely, elegant lady, the Court Pianist to the Tsarina, that could possibly matter to us today? Aren't we thankful for when we listen to Szymanowska's Romances sung by Elisabeth Zapolska and played by Bart van Oort on an antique Aloysius Graff fortepiano from 1820s? One of seven such instruments in the world... It has five pedals, can sound muted, distant, or jangling, percussive, or resonant and boisterous. Who knew so many colors could hide in a box of precious wood and metal? Hats off to those who made and restored this ancient beauty... Hats off to Elisabeth whose enthusiasm and warmth inspired so many...
Bart van Oort and Elizabeth Zapolska perform Maria Szymanowska. November 24, 2015.
Today, I'm grateful for libraries. We would not know who we are, where we came from, who was here before us, what they thought, what they did, what they left for us to find, if not for the nameless armies of librarians, archivists, custodians of our past, and ushers of the future. The Czartoryski family of aristocrats in Poland, and their Home Library of letters and notes that helps us understand the emotions felt by lonely mothers two hundred years ago. The countless, nameless servants of truth, who made sure that these paper gifts survived until today (and are now in Krakow). The Great Emigration exiles in Paris that started the Bibliotheque Polonaise in 1830s, among them the son of Adam Mickiewicz, grandson of Maria Szymanowska, who kept Grandma's papers, jewels and even her satin slippers....
Maja Trochimczyk with Eva Davos-Talma and Prof. Irena Poniatowska, iFrancja.fr.
And let me thank the librarians: Ewa Rutkowska who guards the Mickiewicz manuscripts and Magdalena Glodek who oversees the rare prints and books. Thanks to them I could make my small discoveries, making order out of chaos. I identified a romance by a forgotten woman, Franciszka Kochanowska, found her death date and her family, and doubled the size of her known oeuvre, from one to two songs!!! Hurray!!! The first notice of this rare find was given at the 3e Maria Szymanowska Colloque held at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Paris, with Prof. Irena Poniatowska, my mentor, in attendance.
A page from Maria Szymanowska's Album, Manuscript No. 970,
Bibliotheque Polonaise, Paris.
Soo, I'm grateful for books. The ones written and lovingly preserved, and the ones I'm going to write and publish. One of my favorite books of all times is a set of illuminations of Dante's Divine Commedy by Giovanni di Paolo, way better than the 19th century dark imagery of weird angels and demons. Giovanni paints huge golden suns, the dazzling brilliance of Primum Mobile with real gold.
A revelation and a delight. Coupled with my favorite pomegranates from my tree: a treat for this Thanksgiving!
A Revelation After Il Paradiso
We live in the third sphere
of lovers, in the Earth’s long shadow
Our love waxes and wanes
like the Moon, or Venus rising up
before dawn, the star of the morning
We oscillate from darkness to brilliance,
float from fear into sunlight
to rest on a golden afternoon
in the innocent warmth of affection
among newly planted roses
Imperial, Electric, Compassion
Double Delight and Simplicity roses
in our garden where we trim dried, twisted
branches of old oleanders to make room
for orange blossoms and more pomegranate
always more pomegranate
never enough pomegranate
Dark red translucent juice stains our fingers
Tart juice bursts with flavor
in our mouths, ready for kisses
always ready for more kisses
softest, childlike, strongest, tasting
like the wine we never tasted, the dream
we never even hoped to dream about
escaping the long shadow
of the Earth on a golden afternoon
lovers in the Garden of Love
afternoon in the Third Sphere of Venus
golden, golden, sparkling golden
afternoon on another planet
(c) Maja Trochimczyk, October 2015
Finally, and always, I'm thankful for those who love me, my children, my family, my friends.
Maja, Marcin, Agnieszka, Ian, Anna, May 3, 2015
Among them, there is the talented poet and visionary mystic of deep insights, Ambika Talwar who posted a beautiful note on Facebook... Yes, this is what FB is good for:
Thanksgiving Post from Ambika Talwar Hello Everyone ~ I am here in ND remembering and counting my blessings, my lessons, the gifts from many of you through rough and gentle times. For this I am most grateful. I am remembering my ability to serve and those willing to receive. For this I am most grateful. I am remembering the diverse possibilities arising for our futures that so many of you have shared and I long to learn more ways by which our potential may be realised. For this I am most grateful. I am remembering how utterly alone one can be in this vast world and how someone remembers or shows up to remind you we are not. For this I am grateful. I am remembering my many homes while I sit here in my parents' living room making sense of all our ways and vagrancies, whose lessons are not always easy. For this I must be grateful for those above and those actions unmentioned. And mostly, I am remembering the life of my beloved father and his many sensitivities, sensibilities, and wisdoms - his delighting ways, his challenging ways, his capacities to know and to understand and to love despite our profound differences. To remember and to cherish all this is my deepest privilege now, knowing that this is what will carry me forth wherever I am to now step and claim as mine. I am grateful for my kith and kin, my friends, my most delightful nieces and nephews, the birds and bees, horses.. all sentient beings, all life. I pray I find my new way and am fulfilled in ways not imagined before. And I wish this for each of you, for all of you. With all my love ~ Ambika Talwar
Lois P. Jones, Maja Trochimczyk and Ambika Talwar, Photo by Susan Rogers.
Santa Monica's Rapp Saloon, October 2015
Isn't it a beautiful greeting? From the mind and the heart?
Reading from Woman in Metaphor with Rick Wilson, Beyond Baroque, Oct. 2014
Thanksgiving is the time of counting your blessings. Gratitude is among the four most important moral virtues that make our lives not just endurable but enjoyable as well. What are the other four? I think they go in pairs: forgiveness and gratitude - we do it for ourselves; compassion and generosity - we do it for others. Or the other way around. . . These are companion values to the Four Cardinal Virtues: Fortitude (Courage) and Moderation, Justice and Prudence (Wisdom). Four plus four equals eight equals infinity, if seen on the side. But I digress. When counting my blessings I decided that the poetry "leaders" in our local poetic circles deserve a lot of praise and gratitude for their selfless devotion to expanding the ever growing poetry spheres links and networks in our corner of the world. I selected three extraordinary poets, extremely talented in their own right, but also motivated to promote others and connect us all into this amazing web of beauty, insight and good will. Their names? Kathabela Wilson, Lois P. Jones and Millicent Borges Accardi. I'll present them in the order we met. I should start with Kathabela.
KATHABELA WILSON
Kathabela with Maja at the Poets-Artists Exhibition at Scenic Drive Gallery, 2011.
I met Kathabela at a poetry workshop in Sunland, in 2007. I joined her Poets on Site group immediately, after attending poetry workshops in her home, and meeting her amazing mathematician-flautist husband, Rick Wilson. She is the spirit of poetry in the Foothills, of ever growing circles from her home in Pasadena, through Southern California, to the world. There are so many wonderful poetry things that she has done and continues to do (Tanka, Poets on Site, art, jewelry, photography, book and journal editing, poetry salon and workshop hosting, hat wearing, and even dancing), so it is hard to pick just one thing. Thus, I will pick two: 1) a beautiful poem she wrote about Paderewski, the subject of my research projects in music history - for our joint appearance at a conference dedicated to Chopin and Paderewski and held at Loyola College in Chicago, in 2010, and 2) the series of poetry interviews she recently started for the Colorado Boulevard magazine online - that just featured my interview, she beautifully edited to the right size.
Chopin with Cherries reading in Chicago, 2010, with Sharon Chmielarz
Rick Wilson and Kathabela Wilson in the front row,
What Paderewski Taught Me About Being by Kathabela Wilson
good he tells me the heart moves
moves like the ocean sometimes like a mountain constantly in greeting
his words my pulse the same surprises
trembles holds back rushes forward
washed always in silence silence for what is not
for what has been taken for what is left for what has been given
a nation for what is right the dearly loved what he always wanted
from the edge of her seat a woman leans forward
holds a breath time waits
the woman breathes out whish of wind essence of man
dark and light rubato of being becomes being again
Sharon Hawley, Susan Dobay, Rick and Kathabela Wilson, Pauli Dutton, Erika Wilk and
Maja Trochimczyk, in the back: Joan Stern, Rick Dutton, Bryan Story, and Just Kibbe, 2012.
KATHABELA'S INTERVIEWS WITH POETS
Her weekly interviews with local area poets and artists appear in the Colorado Boulevard, a magazine created to highlight the local communities of the Foothills. At http://coloradoboulevard.net/about-us/ you can sign up for their mailing list for announcements and other interesting news and tid-bits.
Debbie Kolodji, Rick and Kathabela Wilson, Maja Trochimczyk at the Colonnade Gallery.
Once upon a time, Kathabela appeared in my Tarot Card reading as the Lady of Pentacles, the generous lady of this earth and manifold gifts. She is truly a magical spirit of generosity, of a creativity that keeps giving, love that keeps flowing to so many. I wrote for her a poem about her hats, and, lo and behold, started to wearing hats myself. She does have that influence on you. You just want to be her! (Not really, with her, you are truly, deeply yourself). And Kathabela would not be the wonderful Kathabela without her astounding mathematician-musician husband, Rick Wilson. Some of my most favorite readings took place with the accompaniment of his amazing flutes. Many, many thanks to you both!
LOIS P. JONES
Maja and Lois P. Jones in KPFK studio, getting ready for the interview in October 2011.
I actually cannot remember when I met Lois; I feel I've known her all my life - as my long lost sister. She is an incredibly talented poet and photographer, and a wonderful, extraordinary person, with wise insights and a warm heart. I do not know whether it was because of that, or in spite of that, my Poets Cafe interview was quite challenging - she is known for asking tough, surprising questions. But on second and third hearing, I realized that Lois created a true, deep, intimate portrait of me as a poet, and as a human being - homesick for a country that exist only in my memory, and longing for what cannot be...
Lois's personal list of successes is very long and she is one of the "up and coming" poets, dedicated to her craft. She is equally dedicated to promoting others - as co-host of the famed Moonday poetry readings (with Alice Pero) and of the Poets' Cafe. We tried to form a Spiritual Quartet with Susan Rogers and Taoli-Ambika Talwar, and did some inspired readings together, but, at the end, it did not quite worked out. We are now members of a women's writing group, meeting for monthly workshops and poetry conversations - Westside Women Writers (see below for more on that group). I'm also happy that Lois contributed to both of my anthologies. Her poem for "Meditations on Divine Names" (Moonrise Press, 2012), deserves a second, third, and fourth reading.
Shema
Listen!,
the Rabbi said, God is One. Listen for what comes next.
When
death arrives shema is a mezuzah on the threshold
of
our lives, the soul’s last words before leaving a body.
But
I no longer hear the hawk’s cry above the fields
where
you left us. I can no longer count all the bones
that
have buried themselves in me. Only the rabbi’s voice,
a
stranger who entered the last ten minutes of your life
when
the daughters and all their hours could not give the word
to
let you go. This woman who spoke to you beyond a face
swollen
from the fall, and your eyelids sealed
past
opening. She told you what a good job you’d done,
forgave all the secrets—locked drawers finally open—
their invisible contents drifting into the cold clinical air.
Her
words were blood moving through us as we held hands.
The
road and the river as we felt you pass. Not so heavy as a song,
not
even snow on the bough melting. I listened, I watched
you
were so silent, Mother, I could not hear you leave.
(c) 2012 by Lois P. Jones
Lois P. Jones, portrait by Susan Rogers, 2013.
LOIS'S INTERVIEWS ON POETS CAFE
After being interviewed for the Poets' Cafe radio program (KPFK Los Angeles), Lois was asked to serve as a host - her voice is uniquely fit for the radio. She has since interviewed dozens of poets and her shows, produced by the brain behind the whole enterprise, Marlene Bond, are archived on the blog of Tim Green, the editor of Rattle. All friends among friends. Here's the list of poets that Lois interviewed and KPFK broadcast, on Wednesdays at 8:30 p.m. - 30 minutes each.
I met Millicent after I already published her poetry in the anthology Chopin with Cherries: A Tribute in Verse (Moonrise Press, 2010), celebrating the 200th anniversary of Chopin's birth. I loved her poems: not being Polish she was able to capture the impact of Polish folklore on Chopin, as well as the impact of Chopin on Polish music and on the world. Wonderful work, I thought.
Then, we had a reading with Wojciech Kocyan playing the piano and the poets reading their works, at the Ruskin Art Club in Los Angeles. The mansion was an elegant, if somewhat neglected, setting for a poetry salon, with artwork on the walls, a piano and an inspired atmosphere of the Gilded Age. At the end, I gave all poets bouquets made of piano keys with some green leaves from my garden. I took apart an old piano from my garage, specifically for that... hence the delight of the poets seen in the pictures.
Millicent, a Topanga artist and hippie, as she often describes herself, then invited me to a new poetry workshop for women, Westside Women Writers, that has now grown to eight members, and meets faithfully each month, reading poems, discussing poetry matters, sharing meals and companionship. I have grown tremendously as a poet in these workshops and I owe my most recent book, Slicing the Bread, to this august company. Cheers to Millicent for bringing us together and making sure we focus on poetry and the good things in life. And thanks for the many wonderful meals at her enchanting Topanga Canyon cottage, that has seen many disasters but survived... Here are two things I'm grateful for, Millicent's poem about Chopin and her interviews with poets.
Chopin with Cherries Reading at the Ruskin Art Club, LtoR: Millicent Borges Accardi,
Georgia Jones-Davis, Gretchen Fletcher, seated Kathabela Wilson and Kathi Stafford, 2010.
And here's her "formal" bio, for those who do not know her...
Millicent Borges Accardi is a Portuguese-American poet, the author of three books: Injuring Eternity, Woman on a Shaky Bridge (chapbook), and Only More So. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), CantoMundo, the California Arts Council, Fundação Luso-Americana (FLAD), and Barbara Deming Foundation “Money for Woman.” She organizes the literary series Kale Soup for the Soul: Portuguese-American writers reading work about family, food and culture. Follow her on Twitter @TopangaHippie. Her husband, Charles Accardi, is a painter, who created the beautiful portrat of Millicent, gracing the cover of her book - "Woman on the Shaky Bridge" (Finishing Line Press). Another portrait by Charles is reproduced below. What an extraordinarily talented couple.
