October is a Funny Month...of Timelessness and Lilies

In Canada, October is the month for Thanksgiving, but in China, Cyprus, Croatia, Germany, Nigeria, Portugal, Taiwan it is the time to celebrate national holidays. In America we have the Columbus Day and a whole month to come up with the most outreageous, bloody or scary Halloween costumes...

Global October celebrations also include the birthday of Mahatma Ghandi, Free Thought Day, World Food Day, Apple Day, Spirit Day, Halloween, and All Souls Day, among many others. There is something different to celebrate in each country in this month of harvests and remembrances of death and dying. 

One of my favorite, nostalgic and melancholy celebrations of October is the annual visit to a cemetery. Families visit the graves of their loved ones, bring candles and prayers. Thousands of candles flicker in the rain, wet leaves shuffle under the feet, the air is scented with smoke and memories of days past... people gone... happiness subdued by absence... I must say that I rather liked it, these dark evenings among the ancient crooked tombstones of Poland...

Cemeteries are different under the brilliant California sun that banishes melancholy. But it is good to remember our place in the stream of time, a raging torrent that becomes more violent every day. Death and life, farewells and welcomes. New babies are being born and cherished. Life goes on...  For October, I selected a poem on cosmic time and timelessness as it is reflected in the transience and beauty of our lives. Someone said that the best way to walk it is to keep one feet in time and the other in timelessness...

Timelessness
© 2008 by Maja Trochimczyk

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

 

Clouds from Water Lilies by Claude Monet, L'Orangerie, Paris



______________________________________


POETRY UPDATES:

My most recent publications include "The Rite of Passage" that appears in the Epiphany Magazine, Issue 16 (October 2012), accompanied by three photographs of mountains, clouds and roses. The poem celebrated my 2011 vacations in the High Sierras of Calfiornia. I love the clarity and jewel colors of montain lakes!

• Epiphany Magazine, monthly poetry and photography magazine, October 2012 issue - "The Rite of Passage"  

Then, my poem "The Unseen" inspired by teaching arts and ethics in a Los Angeles County Jail, was selected by the online site and print yearbook, Van Gogh's Ear:

• Van Gogh's Ear, poetry journal, October 2012 - "The Unseen"

The first two poems of the cycle "Among the Lilies" - "Water Lily I" and "Water Lily II" (inspired by Claude Monet's paintings at L'Orangerie) were selected by Marie Lecrivain for her section in the annual mammoth Lummox Journal. The next two "Water Lilies" are a fitting follow up and are reprinted below. These poems are my souvenirs from my trip to Paris in October 2011.

• Lummox  Magazine, a poetry anthology published by Lummox Press, ISBN 978-1-929878-38-3
  Perfect bound, Trade Paper, 230 + pages; $30, $25 (includes shipping from the publisher)
  http://www.lummoxpress.com/journal.html

                   Lilies by Claude Monet, L'Orangerie, Paris

Water Lily III

(c) 2011 by Maja Trochimczyk

He keeps the colors royal

Vermillion and scarlet

The breeze shifts, scattering the patterns

Cleansing the air

From distant traces of mustard gas 

The breath and the brushstroke are one

He is the wind, moving through the garden

Made to be painted

Fading

                       Lilies by Claude Monet, L'Orangerie, Paris

Water Lily IV

(c) 2011 by Maja Trochimczyk

Lily pads float up into indigo

Gathering like birds before winter

Pulled by the gravity of belonging

They fall into the night

Blossoms and cicadas

A nightingale’s song swirls above their sleep

A cricket counts the brushstrokes

Stiff fingers ache

It is good he had the ponds dug out

Life is good

                         Lilies by Claude Monet, L'Orangerie, Paris

_________________________________

Photo Credits:
Photo of clouds at Eaton Canyon, Pasadena, CA, September 2012 by Maja Trochimczyk
Photos of fragments of Claude Monet's Water Lilies at L'Orangerie in Paris, October 2011, by Maja Trochimczyk

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

_________________________________________________________

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