August Tales from the Garden and the Sea

My garden is a refuge and a source of endless delights, even without a side fence removed for the month-long, very noisy construction of a neighbor's swimming pool next door.  The bees in the crape myrtle tree sound almost like those of my Grandma's - from her linden tree. The birds are busy flittering from side to side of the garden, drinking water or picking on my green grapes. The rabbits - yes I have two wild rabbits, or rather wild hares living in thickets under the bushes - nibble on grass blades in the shade, hop around to explore, stop to look at me with the black beady eyes, somewhat curious, but utterly unafraid. They trained us, humans, well, these hares. The dog next door guards them from coyotes, the kids give them carrots. Perfection!  I tried to write a poem about the hare, but it turned into a short story...

When I go out to the front porch in the morning, I am startled by enormous white wings of the great egret spreading out right in front of me. The stream in the wash dried out. We do not poison our yards with toxins. Egrets, hares, and a flotilla of birds come over to eat and drink, enjoy the mini-Eden... Did I mention that there are plenty of bees? Mason bees?

Mason Bees

I share my roses with the mason bees –

Iceberg leaves they like the best, cutting

circles and ellipses from the edge, inwards.

 

Iceberg roses, not iceberg lettuce, mind you,

that’s far too crunchy to make soft beds, wrapping

bee babies in green, white or pink silkiness,

 

smooth and pliable like we ought to be, smiling

under the merciless gale of time, raging river

flowing backwards, always backwards.

 

I used to get angry looking at my mutilated

roses – white blossoms, a defense against evil

guarding my front door like bee soldiers in the hive

 

ready to sacrifice their lives – just one sting

and the miniature fuzzy warrior’s gone – having

lived just to protect and serve us, the worker bees,  

 

buzzing around our lives, cutting circles and

ellipses in white roses. Bees and humans, we are

all children of the Queen Bee, Gaia, our Mother.

 

We make honey of our kindness, virtues, character

wisdom, self-reliance. Attentive, focused on the next

perfect circle, semicircle or ellipsis – we breathe deeply,

 

delight in drinking nectar, carrying pollen of emotions,

sights, impressions – flying back home to make the sweetest

gold, translucent honey of our poems, of our dreams.

 

Published in the California Quarterly 47 no 2 summer 2021

On Thursday Afternoon

Your voice outside my window –

deep, calm flowing inexorably like a river

towards the future we will not know until 

we look back and the past and say:

So that’s what you meant. So, that’s what it was.

Understanding the whole of the whole

that encircles us in a glowing sphere of 

emotions – forgiveness, radiance, joy

of the fleeting moment, The present.

The golden line of a mockingbird song 

weaves in and out of time – I follow

its ornamental thread into the present – 

space opened up by gratitude

blossoming in a smile. 

Sparrows in the birdbath, jet planes

in the sky, hummingbird’s wings, 

the dove’s shadow passing over the lawn

and chimes playing endless variations

of the same melody over and over

until all time ends and we are back

in that singularity beyond all spatiotemporal 

emanations, back in One Love of One 

Mind, One Will, One – Us.

On day trips to the beach, I see sea-gulls, pelicans and sand-pipers when I walk along the sandy expanse. It is the waves and the water that I'm most interested in, the endless soothing rhythm, the untamed energy.  Life itself.  The light that scatters on the surface, the play of the elements - earth, water, air, wind, fire...

The Glow of Forgiveness

Like a mountain stream over rocks,

wearing them out droplet by droplet,

forgiveness flows inexorably to its 

dissolution in the blessed serenity

of living waters of the presence,

knowledge, charm. 

Infinitely self aware and infinitely grateful,

you the forgiving one are also forgiven – 

all limitations removed, all rubble of past 

misfortunes cleared to reveal a smooth expanse

of  sunlit ocean – gold and silver, topaz and jade 

with a sprinkling of diamonds shimmering 

on glass smoothness, scattering around you 

as you float on the surface, resting beyond 

sorrow, beyond pain, beyond time.

I wrote Aquamarine a while back and sent to Carole Boyce, she liked it and included in the "Blue and the Blues" anthology that she published in January 2021. It is a wonderful anthology, and I'm pleased to add some shades of blue to its rainbow.

Aquamarine

lucid

          lucent

                      translucent

                                waves of the Pacific 

 jade, turquoise, aqua

sea foam                in the air                

                sea foam             on my skin

I dance on the currents 

       floating with the relentless motion

          to the shore 

                          to the shore

                                             to the shore

sea foam           on my skin

           sea foam                    in the air

Aphrodite comes up from the ocean

               carried on a dazzling shell by dolphins  

                                                      the wisest of creatures

lucid

            lucent

                              translucent

fizzy bubbles on my tongue – 

                        I swim in the champagne ocean

Salt of the Sol – sunshine of vitality

                                   I praise the elemental power of Water –                                                   

Air – Wind – Earth – Fire

                                     always Fire – ogień, Agni

eternal flames stir the waves 

          into dancing 

                    to the shore 

                             to the shore 

                                        on and on

                                 to the shore

                                                              to the shore

                                                                          to the shore

(c) 2020 by Maja Trochimczyk

Published in "Blue and the Blues" anthology edited by Carole Boyce

Father's Day on the Beach

Did you notice how children want you to admire them when they are doing something special? I used to sit in my garden and watch my son jumping on the trampoline. As it turned out, I had to watch him, I could not read my paper instead, because the moment I lowered my eyes he’s cry out from the air, “Mommy, Mommy, look at me, look how I jump. Did you see what I did? Oh, you are not looking…”

Their childhood passes so quickly: they grow up, graduate from high school, from college. Then, they move away. We are left alone, wishing that we looked at them when they asked. (I’m glad I did). In June we celebrate graduations and the Father’s Day. Here’s a poem I wrote about a father and his little daughter playing on the beach. That daughter might have been me, on the distant, cold shore of the Baltic Sea. My father did not like water, but I spent hours swimming. I even knew how to swim backwards…

On the Beach

Daddy, Daddy! Look at me!
Look how I jump! Higher than the waves!

Daddy, look! I caught a fish!
Oh, it got away…
Don’t worry, Daddy, it’s okay,
I can be a fish.

Look, I’m swimming.
I’m a fish now and you are a shark.
Try to catch and eat me!
Let’s play fish!

Na-na-na-na-na
You can’t get me
You can’t get me
Na-na-na-na-na

Wow! That was a big wave!
Salty! I swim backwards now.
Did you know I can swim
backwards like a crab?

Watch out! I got you!
The crab caught the shark
and ate him! I win! I win! I win!

Let’s walk along now,
Maybe we’ll find
pretty seashells for my room.
Maybe we’ll find a pearl.
Will you make me a crown with my pearl?
I’ll be a real pearl princess.

I love you, Daddy, I love you so much!
I’ll always be your princess!

Daddy, Daddy! Look!
I found a pearl!

© 2008 by Maja Trochimczyk


For a companion piece to this childish monologue of a five-year-old, I picked a “geometric” poem, structured in two parts with a “horizon” line in between, just like the paining it was inspired by. (“Linea in aurea” means “line in gold” – almost, it is not correct Latin, but sounds good. “On the Beach” also has this pivotal central point in the little girl’s song, so there’s a structural similarity in two vastly different poems.)

For some reason, a beautiful, geometric painting by my favorite Hungarian painter, Susan Dobay, called “Sunset,” reminded me of pearls. Maybe it was the memory of the shining surface of water at dusk, an expanse of brilliance against the quickly graying sky. But the geometric transformation made this image a beach from an alien planet. Pearls are, according to one legend, made of a mother’s tears that fell into the water and became jewels, shining with sadness. There is something melancholy in their glossy sheen. They also lose their luster when not worn, for they have to be touched by warm human skin to stay shining and brilliant.

The subdued colors of Susan’s “Sunset” are quite melancholy, just like the pearls. I created a subdued mood by repeating the “sibilants” – shell, sunset, shelter, sun, sadness, sand, shore, silver… The word “shell” has another meaning in the last line: “shell-shocked” means “deeply traumatized.” One consequence of trauma is a tendency to escape from reality, another is compulsive control over one’s surroundings, continually organized in perfect order, just like the waves in Susan’s painting. That’s what makes this image so sorrowful and full of meaning for me, ten years after the death of my father from gunshot wounds. A home invasion robbery I wish I could forget. Or, maybe today I’ll wear another string of pearls…



Shelled Sunset

~ after a painting by Susan Dobay

In a parallel universe
umbrellas are made of seashells
and shelter suns from the glare
of the waves – daintily, stealthily
threading lines through more lines
ad infinitum. The air breathes
with golden contours of silence
after sadness danced away
on the sand, at the shore,
above silver waves – twirling,
circling towards the horizon.

Linea in aurea in linea
Line after line after line

You have to tread carefully here,
not to be snared by metallic vines
that multiply, moving into calm.
You have to be cautious – so close
to the heart of sorrow in this cosmos
of resignation, dignity and absence,
where waves petrify into shells,
the rhythm of their frozen crests
echoing the pearl-gray patterns
that blossom in the foreign,
distant, shell-shocked sky.

© 2009 by Maja Trochimczyk

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Photos and poetry (c) 2008-2011 by Maja Trochimczyk
"Sunset" by Susan Dobay, used by permission

Seeing and Hearing in the Spring

The gift of poetry is a gift of seeing and hearing the world as if it were discovered for the first time, seeing differently. A lot of my poems are written in “my” persona, an immigrant from Poland, a woman in love… One short example is below – I am a pious Catholic and I love late Gothic art, gold halos on paintings and sculptures of Madonnas.

Seeing Madonnas
at the National Museum, Warsaw

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.



Since I can see mountains from my bedroom window, and they look so beautiful all day long with changing colors, shadows, clouds, (not that I spend my days lounging in bed... though with a laptop you can have a "bed-office" as a part of your "home-office"), I find myself writing about the mountains a lot. When I used to fly around the country to conferences and lectures, leaving home at least once per month, my poems were about seeing the world from above the airplane wings, looking down on the Liliputian people below. Here's a poem about the rain season and what happens then:

Canyon Growing Pains

The little baby Canyon said to his Mama
“I want to grow up big, like you!”
She responded: “You have to lose yourself,
Forget your shape, your well-made borders,
Stretch beyond the boundaries
Of decency and rocks.
You have to flow with the flow
Of winter’s blizzards, summer rains.
You have to …” That’s where she was stopped
By violent tremors.

Her child, the Canyon, was no longer little.
A wall of vicious passion roaring down,
He playfully swept old pine-trees off their roots,
Broke windows, covered houses
with thick mud layers, piles on the grass.
He carved a new path from the mountains,
Down to the ancient riverbed, his Grandpa.

What would a teenage Canyon do?
We have no knowledge. Before he grows,
Let’s save our lives and move.

In this poem, I use the "device" of personalization - depicting the canyon stream as a child growing up during the rainy season.

A similar device worked quite well when I envisioned the mountains as ladies getting ready for their earthquake dance by having mud-baths and showers (see my poem, "Mountain Watch" published here earlier). Not that either one is a masterpiece; just an occasional celebration of the spring.

Another place that I cherish in the spring, and actually year-round, is my garden of roses, fruit-trees and a jungle of bushes where many songbirds find shelter.

I spent my childhood in a suburban garden like that in Poland, and liked watching the plants grow, finding the first shoots of green among the dead foliage in March. Birds would come back to sing in late March or April. The winters were too cold for them, filled only with crows and ravens, that flew to Poland from much colder Scandinavia.

The pattern of birdsong in California is different, as many northern songbirds come here for winter or, at least, a portion of it. We have a burst of birdsong in October. Have yo noticed? March is filled with a symphony of voices.

Bird’s News

The bird in my yard
eloquently said

“The Spring has come!
The Spring has come!
Completely, secretly
WILL STAYYYYYYYY!!!
Oooh, yes, yes, yes, yes,
Come and hear,
come and hear,
come and seeeee!”

Indeed,
when I went out,
the Spring was there,
smiling
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In February I went to hear the poetry of my friend, actress, poet and photographer, Elena Secota, who was a featured poet at Beyond Baroque, www.elenasecota.com

Recited with a lovely voice and in a slight Romanian accent, accompanied by a guitar of her friend, Chad, her poetry took us to her favorite place in the world, the beach, where she escaped to watch the waves of the ocean in solitude. She wrote a whole book of poems about the ocean and illustrated it with her photographs, some taken repeatedly from the same place at 6:30 a.m. That’s dedication!

The book is written in one poetic persona, “her” persona – imagined to an extent, since she is the most social of my friends, always forging and strengthening friendships, bringing people together. Yet, she praises solitude…


_____________________________________


Photographs of leaves (c) 2010 by Maja Trochimczyk.

Portrait of Elena Secota, courtesy of Elena Secota.

Gothic Madonna: Tilman Riemenschneider (German, c. 1460-1531), Madonna and Child, carved linden wood. Wikipedia.