Harvesting Pears and Poems

The dahlias are in full bloom. It is time to eat fruit fresh off the trees. Time to walk in the orchard, pick apricots and make smooth, orange, tangy and fragrant apricot jam. Time to climb up the ladder and pick the plums, split in half by a sudden rain shower. You can eat them straight off the branches, or pick and drop in the box to make plum preserves for filling in donuts, or to bake a plum cake, or, for the gourmet cooks, among us, to pickle them in vinegar with a touch of cinnamon and cloves.

Where is such succulent and luxurious fruit? On the trees? Somewhere, perhaps, but not very often on the shelves of our local supermarkets. The fruit made for mass production, distribution and transport long-distance is too often tasteless, dry and wooden. It is beautiful on the outside, but completely unappealing on the inside. Also: hard, very, very hard. To survive the thousands of miles on the road, of course, taste be damned...

I remember the pear tree in my grandma’s yard. How soft and fragrant and juicy were those pears! Called, incongruously "klapsy" ("claps"). The ones I buy now are often so hard, they are difficult to cut with a knife, let alone bite! Ah, the dangers of genetic engineering! Was all this technological progress supposed to help us make the world a better place, or just make life easier (and the profit margins greater) for those who sell fruit in "bulk"? What are the GM engineers doing to our fruit? Where are the pears and peaches of yesteryear?

A Pear in a Tree

In a fruit orchard
By the sandy path
I climbed a pear tree
To watch the road
Melt into the horizon

I ate a golden pear
Juice stained my dress
My day dream of white
softness cut short
by the buzzing of wasps

They, too, longed for
The fruity sweetness
Of warm summer pears
They, too, dreamed
Of endless sunlight.

(c) 2012 by Maja Trochimczyk


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With lots and lots to do, I have not even noticed that more than a month passed since my last post here. There are some news and updates from the poetry front:

My Three Postcards from Paris was just published in the July issue of Quill and Parchment: www.quillandparchment.com.

 To read you need the username (july) and the password (salmon). This is a special issue with ekphrastic poetry, inspire by artwork. My three poems divide their inspiration between the real Paris I visited in October 2011 and the painted Paris from the lovely watercolors of Ron Liebrecht.

The journal's editor, Sharmagne Leland St. John reprinted the watercolors not only for my poems, but also throughout the journal. These "snapshots" of various European landmarks are seen with a masterly eye towards detail and in a novel perspective. In each of the images, there is something special to notice in passing.
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The "Meditations on Divine Names" anthology has finally been published. In a divided world, this volume brings together poets of diverse spiritual orientations and religious traditions. Their poetry is inspired, luminous. I hope that the readers will enjoy this group effort.

The book is available on lulu and through other booksellers in print format. The digital edition will take a while to prepare: www.moonrisepress.com/divine.html.

The first reading from the new anthology is scheduled for Sunday, July 22, 2012, at 4:30 p.m. at Bolton Hall Museum in Tujunga: 10110 Commerce Avenue, Tujunga, California.

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Convergence

Little by little, we shall see the universal horror unbend, and then smile upon us, and then take us in its more human arms.

          ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu, III: 3 B

everyone is singing around me

everyone

awash in their voices

I stand in the Melbourne cathedral

English vespers, communion

my heart races — I am still

I am taken — the bread circle

becomes my body — I am the bread

white manna surrounds the world

in a blizzard — dancing, falling

I fly with the spirit-wind

encircle the globe

I multiply like loaves and fishes

in the desert

I am eaten, nourish millions

set them on fire

snowing manna

droplets of light

sparks of cosmic

flames everywhere

 

blur of velocity

heights and depths

swirling whiteness

streams ablaze

on terraced rice-paddies

in musty stone cathedrals

                                                                      

in old wooden churches

shining like amber at dusk

serenity ascends

into translucence

I’m the blanket of light

that covers the world

I’m the song

love sings

(c) 2011 by Maja Trochimczyk
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I saw poems on a sidewalk in New York, London, and now also Berkeley, California.

Here are two found poems I liked in Berkeley:

Living in the Moment... Looking, Seeing, Breathing, Picking Mushrooms

Thanks to the lovely hostess, Elena Secota, and friendly poets and musicians the featured reading at the Rapp Saloon was very enjoyable. I even had a bass-guitar accompaniment to some of my poems, including "Look at me..." inspired by Ella Fitzgerald's version of Misty.

Rocky played the melody during the poem's refrains and was silent during the narrative stanzas. It worked very well! The poem itself is published on this blog, as well as in the Loch Raven Review.  My reading of this poem is on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJzzOId3KCY&feature=youtu.be

"Look at me..."

               the dark honey of Ella's voice 

                               filled the valley with a golden sheen

The bike stopped at the red light.

The biker looked at me intently.

All in black leather, he did not seem familiar.

              the dark honey of Ella's voice 

                                 spilled onto the asphalt

The light changed to green. I was touched 

by the brightness in his eyes as he drove by, 

turning his head, clearly off-balance. He stopped 

to gaze at my metallic Honda.  I felt his surprise. 

             the dark honey of Ella's voice 

                               blossomed in an aftertaste of sweetness

I knew he realized who I was, 

the woman he found irresistible again 

and again and again. I wonder if he told 

his girlfriend about our sunny encounter. 

 

          the dark honey of Ella's voice 

                       flowed over the wonderland --

                               the dark honey, oh, the dark honey

The country road led me towards live oak

and grassy slopes, shining yellow and bronze.

There was no hatred, just being alive 

after the storm. I was silent. I had nothing to say.

(C) 2009 by Maja Trochimczyk

 My listeners liked it a lot, but the greatest impact on the audience was made by another, older poem of a more philosophical nature. 

I wrote "Memento Vitae" after the death of a good friend. The title, modeled on a medieval monks' maxim, Memento Mori (Remember Death), means "Remember Life." 

Memento Vitae 

Let's talk about dying. 

The gasp of last breath. 

The end. Or maybe not, 

We don't know. 

Let's talk about the last day. 

What would you do if you knew?

Whom would you love? 

Would you find your dearest,

most mysterious love? 

Or would you just stay

in the circle of your own?

 

Would you rob, steal or insult anyone?

Would you cry? Burn your papers?

If the fabric of your future

shrank to one day,

or maybe just

an hour?

Let's talk about living, then. 

The next breath,

that will take you

to the next minute,

the next heartbeat.

Just about – now.

   

Soon after presenting my work to a very gracious audience at what should be called "Poetry Salon at the Saloon," I was on the way to the High Sierras for my first real vacation in years - without the internet, TV, or Blackberry. I was off the grid, wandering around lush mountain meadows and forests, while the Kadafi regime fell and Hurricane Irene was approaching New York. 

A week in the wilderness was a time of tranquility, rest, and spiritual revival. I listened to the breeze singing in the tops of the trees, as they whispered and sighed. I swam in the cold mountain lake every morning, leaving my worries "in my wake" - and I wrote a poem about it. Since it is still unfinished, here is a humorous testimonial to picking wild mushrooms among tall pine trees and delicate aspen.

On Mushrooms 

In the forest of Christmas trees for giants 

I look for the shapes of mushrooms I used to 

Know well – hiding in tall grass under the aspen, 

Beneath piles of pine needles and bark 

Prawdziwek – the true one, 

 The king of the forest, Boletus 

Rules in unexpected places 

Among birch twigs and Douglas fir 

Osaki, Kozaki – his second-rate, 

 Still lovely cousins wait in the shade 

Among manzanita, wild currants and fern. 

Osak

I find bitter, colorful szatans, 

Pretending to be true pale muchomory

My grandma used to kill flies 

In a glass filled with sugar water 

Szatan, inedible lookalike of a Prawdziwek

Psie grzybki (Dog's 'shrooms) have very thin stems, blades under the cup.

Psie grzybki fit for a dog 

That would not eat them 

And twisted, tree-growing huba 

I do not know how to cook. 

My share of mushrooms? 

The toxic lookalikes of true ones! 

That’s all there is in this 

Enchanted forest for me. 

And this is why, my dears, 

I wrote And you read Confessions 

Of a Failed Mushroom-picker.

 Picking mushrooms is a great activity, as it takes your mind off everything, since it requires all the attention you have to spot and claim the mushrooms hidden under pine needles or in the grass. Next year I might be more lucky and actually find some... Besides, I do have to swim around that rocky island in the middle of the lake, with just one pine tree on it!

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 All poems and nature photographs (c) 2008-2011 by Maja Trochimczyk. 

Portrait of Maja and Rocky by Elena Secota.

Summer Blues in Indigo and Gold

You should never believe a poet. They make stuff up. They create worlds of words and twine. They always lie. Do they? Is a poem made of personal experience distilled into its essence that transcends the individual origins and speaks to millions? Is a poem a lesson in verbal pyrotechnics, exploding with fireworks of erudition, allusion and sophistication? Is a poem just a page from an intimate journal left to be read and pondered long after the thinker and the pen are gone?

The pen could outlive the thinker - we see the golden pens in museums. Would the computer do it, too? If the technology shifts as fast as it does, what could we put in our museums along with the clothes and plates and pillows of dead poets? Maybe their Kindles, laptops and smart phones that they use to read their work, scrolling down the screen with miraculously agile thumbs while holding the tiny device up in the air and squinting, because the font is too small in the feeble light on the stage...

Maybe nothing. Maybe there will not be any museums built for poets living today. Too many poets lived and died and clamored for fame already. There's no more space for museums, no space for new words to be added to the universe of language that surrounds us, that makes us who we are, fully human. Does it? Is language, fit for naming things and limiting them with a label, the answer? The only answer? Too many questions just give you a headache.

Mister Cogito wrote Zbigniew Herbert, taking his cue from the famous saying Cogito ergo sum... In her intensely intelligent essay, Oriana Ivy wrote an ode to non-thinking as a key to bliss. I followed another lead - into doubt (Dubito ergo sum , instead of Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum as Rene Descartes's dictum is sometimes rendered), but I will save it for another day. Could the poets say: Scribo, ergo sum? - "I write, therefore I am?" Sounds unusually boring. How about: Lego, ergo sum... or Recito, ergo sum... (I read, recite...) This does not work either. Amo, ergo sum - now, that's something altogether lovely, but we cannot be mono-thematic, can we.


I started public readings at Poets on Site various events around Pasadena and decided to start the summer with a reprint of one poem first heard in Torrance in the summer of 2008, the first reading that surprised me by the hushed attention of the audience. Everyone was silent, listening to my voice. An eerie feeling, even for a former college professor, used to inspiring silence in the classroom. The difference was that the poets were listening to my own words, not regurgitated thoughts of others. I start from this poem to welcome back our founder and leader, Kathabela Wilson and her wonderful musician-mathematician husband. They just returned from a long tour of China. The picture, by Milford Zornes is depicted in the lower left corner of the photograph. Susan Rogers, who later took my portrait above and called it "Maja Starlet" is standing and reading behind me.

Point San Vincente

~ inspired by a painting by Milford Zornes

Wincenty, my Orthodox great grandpa,
was a cipher I'll never unravel
except that the name bore a whiff
of old-fashioned stiffness.
Prim and proper, St. Vincent
was the patron of lovers in Poland
before the wave of Valentine's red hearts
swept aside such quaint traditions.
In France, old beggars crowded
to St. Vincent de Paul, the giver of bread
to the hungry, love to the afflicted.
In California, one young Vince was proud
of his middle name, shared with the saint.

A lone lantern shines in Vincent's name
onto deep ocean waters from the cliff
of last hope for those who lost
their most cherished treasure –
their life, drowned in the foam
of temptations, slowly strangled
by the fecund seaweed of desire.
Dangers lurk beneath the surface,
tentacled monsters wait
to pull weary swimmers under the waves.

Lasciate omni speranza say the gates
to Dante's Inferno. In the ocean,
Symbolophorus barnardi, the lanternfish
lures its victims with a false light
shining in the murky depths. The golden
sands announce the safety of shore. There is hope.
The light keeps calling: "Come to me,
come to Point San Vincente, come home."

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This occasional poem brings together various Vincents from my life in a free play of associations, centered on the image of the light shining over the ocean. Since the inspiration was the painting of Point San Vincente, I skipped the obvious reference to paintings by Vincent van Gogh.

Three years later, on the way to work, I saw horses wondering around their enclosure and the image wrote itself into a poem of sorts. Still fresh and unfinished (too wordy), it brings together disparate thoughts and images in another play of associations.



Summer Blues


The bay colt learns
how to shake his tail
properly from left to right
looking at his mom’s smooth bronze coat,
swift movements. Three-times his size,
she does not mind the attention.
They trot around the enclosure
in locked step, their manes waving.

“You look like a tomato” –
my son notices my skin
burned by the first rays of summer.
“Sunscreen, Mom, it’s called sunscreen”
– scolds the girl, as cautious
as ever.

I wish I lived in Spain
danced the flamenco every night,
an outpouring of passion
distilled into gestures.
I wish I had a horse ranch
in Nevada – a big Stetson hat
and cowboy boots to shield me
from rattlesnakes, made of their skin.

I was a ballerina,
played in an orchestra,
baked Canadian muffins
I hated, with bran and molasses.
Choral singing, knitting
and embroidery - two perfect napkins
still await the half-finished
tablecloth with Art Nouveau flowers
entwined along the edges
in purple and gold.

Shape-shifting, I move
from place to place, life to life,
like a petal carried by the gale
above the ocean.

The colt will grow into a horse.
The children will find their paths
to make and follow. I’ll keep dancing
my solitary flamenco – black, twirling skirts,
fluid gestures cutting the air
that shimmers with the strumming of guitars.
Throaty voices tear the hearts
with nostalgia
for life that could not be.


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The heartbreaking beauty of flamenco used to be spontaneous, but is so strictly choreographed these days, there's no room for invention. The flamenco "I" would have danced - in my poem - does not, could not, exist.

In contrast, it is very pleasant to write about things that are.
Solid, physical, gold-plated, able to withstand the assault of time.
Things outlive us. The pianist's suit laughs in its glass case,
in a museum room filled with things that make the absence, the loss of the owner even more vivid. His body already turned into dust.

The solidity of a Japanese screen calls for a celebration in a "mock-haiku" sequence. The golden glow is made to last, it is created to fix a moment into perpetuity, transform the afternoon minute into timelessness.

Six Variations on a Screen

Rich golden sunset
blooms with intensity
ignored by the birds

Camellia blossoms
with innocence unnoticed
In the dazzle of sunlight

Pine branches shine
stars in the gold sky
happily oblivious

The rocks sigh, resting
aged by mineral stardom
tired into existence

The mossy slope spreads
between glistening stones
sleepy with contentment

Green grass awakens
the veil lifts before you enter
serene gold kingdom

This poem also came from an inspiration by Kathabela, who organized a Japanese-themed Poets on Site reading at the Pacific Asia Museum in 2010. The golden beauty of the screen fills the room with tranquility. No wonder, billionaires spend such fortunes on collecting artwork! Could someone spare a fortune for collecting words?

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Credits:

Portrait by Susan Rogers (2009, Pasadena)
Photo from Poets on Site reading at APC Gallery in Torrance by Kathabela Wilson(2008)
Photo of a matilla poppy by Maja Trochimczyk (2011)
Photo from Poets on Site reading at Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena by Kathabela Wilson (2010)
"Point San Vincente" was first published in a chapbook edited by Kathabela Wilson for Poets on Site (2008) - Three Generations: Milford Zornes, Bill Anderson and Ron Liebbrecht
"Six Variations on a Screen" was first published in a chapbook edited by Kathabela Wilson for Poets on Site (2010) - Gifts to the Japanese Collection at the Pacific Asia Museum

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COMMENTS FROM FACEBOOK
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Kathabela Wilson wrote:

"So, so sweet and beautiful Maja, you know how I love your poetry and love our collaborations. That is the most beautiful welcome I can imagine. And this is such amazing timing as we begin a NEW adventure together as Poets on Site for the Pacific Asia Museum's 40th anniversary exhibition, 2011! I love your tapestry of words here, and hear them ring. As some of the countries of Pacific Asia still resonate with immediacy in my mind I am up late weaving words too. You would have loved to see me writing in the dark on the way to Yellow Mountain, the words tumble over one another for 20 pages...in my journal for the trip... I know I can decipher them but there is something so amazing about the wildness of that first writing... maybe tomorrow I will untangle them and let them sing... our words will turn to gold... words on white like sunset coloring clouds, and seeping into the dark pen of night..."

Toti O’Brian wrote:

"Marvelous good morning I got, with these thoughts, poems and images of beauty. Thank you Maja! The words of poets are just like dreams, as you well demonstrate all the time: not only true, but quintessentially true. Yes, the story has been told already an uncountable number of times, but, as papa stork says to mama stork (they're are two amazing philosophers, after all) in Hans Christian's tale... . we will say it again, and again, and again. Trust the stork."

Lois P. Jones wrote:

"Awash and awakened in this golden outpouring Maja, weaving the thread of wonder between memory and imagination. Your rich history, mingled with the ecstatic bounty of nature makes for such a pleasure ride. How fortunate for those who know you that the scholar turned to poetry. When poetry calls to us...it is like the siren we cannot resist, no matter how we might try :)"

Rina Rose wrote:

"Maja, every word of prose and poetry is beautiful and magical. If I haven't thought so before, I think so now that you are one of my favorite poets. You are still a teacher, at whose feet so many (or at least this one) poet(s) would love to sit and learn. And I do learn from your words here."

Scott Kaestner wrote:

Wonderfully elegant per usual Maja, may you continue to dance with your muse and make music with language and I shall sing along to praise your poesy...


Oriana Ivy wrote:

"A lovely post. Marvelous opening photo. I am also taken with “nostalgia for what never was, could not be” – one of the main themes of my poems.

Yes, it takes a intelligence to argue against thinking – or introverted overthinking, to be exact. Interesting that the “think less” portion of this post is getting the most attention. I am certainly aware that some situations require us to think more. But productive thinking is “task-oriented thinking.” By “think less” I meant introverted overthinking that in my case invariably led to the conclusion: “I am a failure.” Maybe the word “thinking” should not be even applied to this phenomenon. It’s an automatic delusional train of thought that is not to be confused with functional thinking or the creative process.

I am also thinking of Dante’s warning against the misuse of the intellect. To Dante, misuse of reason was the source of all sin. But what truly haunts me is Jack Gilbert’s dementia. He used to be brilliant, and his best poems are indeed very good. His earlier photos showed a craggy, gloomy face, all sharp features and no smile. His recent ones show him with a roundish, cherubic face, and a happy smile at last. I am tempted to say he (involuntarily, to be sure) traded intelligence for bliss (in some cases, dementia disables mostly the left hemisphere, leaving the victim cheerful and sweet and childlike, delighted by the smallest things). Would I ever trade my intelligence for this kind of bliss? Never.

For all this brave talk about bliss, I put intelligence first. Nothing comes ahead of intelligence. If I had a choice between more intelligence or more bliss, I’d take more intelligence, in spite of the biblical warning that “in much wisdom is much grief, and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow” (Eccl 1:18). Intelligence can be either a source of deep pleasure – when I read a challenging book, for instance, one that makes me think – or a tool of torture when it turns against me, trying to find answer to questions such as “What is the greatest mistake I made in my life?”

It’s thanks to my intelligence that I know there can be no reliable answer. I also know that it doesn’t matter what the mistake was, since the process of healing remains the same: I have to forgive myself, acknowledge the huge role of circumstances I couldn't control, and move on (what Milosz called “escaping forward into work”). It’s thanks to my intelligence that I decided not to be depressed, and defined my “no-think zones” – my former portals to depression, which I could enter at will as a refuge against the hardship of engaging with the world. It’s thanks to my intelligence that I can read, re-read, and analyze – and write. I’d still choose to be intelligent rather than happy, assuming such a choice existed. But since the proper use of intelligence – going into a subject in depth, for instance, or “gazing at the world” – gives me great pleasure, it’s not an either/or. My new ideal is “intelligent AND happy.”

There is the kind of bliss which gives the brain a rest from thinking, or else the thinking is effortless: the surprising discovery and insight, the right ending for a poem. For me, these are watery phenomena that occur while I am in the shower. But there is also intellectual bliss, the bliss of making a huge, dedicated effort – the bliss of studying and learning, the bliss of writing a complex piece of prose (I typed “peace,” since writing prose is so beautifully peaceful in contrast to writing poetry, which easily slides into the hell of obsession). Of course I enjoy and welcome the watery bliss of non-thinking. But I am not giving up the bliss of complex thinking, of using my conscious mind to the utmost."

John Guzlowski wrote:

“In a world increasingly given to stark images of chaos and collapse, forgotten mothers and orphaned houses, it's important to celebrate the occasional moments of transient beauty that still somehow occur."

Oriana Ivy answered:

"I agree about the need to celebrate moments of beauty, but I wonder if the chaos and collapse are anything new. Possibly the Victorians' flight into the kind of sentimental beauty that we now reject was their reaction to the "dark satanic mills." Or think about the horrors of the Middle Ages -- yet some of medieval art is the most transcendent ever produced by humanity."

John Guzlowski responded:

"I'm sure people have always felt something of the chaos and collapse, but really when I think about how much violence there is now and how much violence there was in the last century, I feel that maybe there is more chaos and collapse."

Oriana Ivy ended the discussion:

"No question that the 20th century will be known as the age of mass annihilation, but what makes me slightly optimistic is the spread of education, the rising life expectancy, the economic surge in countries such as India and China, more communication, and much else. The progress is painfully slow, with backslides, but we are progressing. That's not to say we'll ever run out of pain, or that the beauty of nature can cease to inspire us to praise. Gee, maybe my optimism has something to do with my knee shots? And knowing that in the worst-case scenario, I won't be subject to the kind of crude knee replacement that was the only option 20 years ago? It is one of the ironies of my life that I, a poet, take comfort not in art (well, occasionally), but I am thrilled by leaps in science, technology and medicine. The genius of humanity, the collective psyche, does not fail to awe me -- in spite of religious wars and other monstrosities."

"To return to the gift of Maja's post, what comes to my mind is this statement by Joseph Campbell: "We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy." My last blog post tries to say the same thing, and discusses various unexpected means achieving to more joy, e.g. limit choice (who knew?). "We must risk delight" -- Jack Gilbert"

Susan Dobay wrote:

"To my understanding those poets who lead us toward to higher awareness through imagination are giving us more TRUTH than those who giving facts and materialistic reality. Maja's poetry gives me beauty and food for my soul. The make up stuff could be closer to truth than the fact based lies."