"All Together Now" Or the Moebius Strip of Time in 2026

Something strange happens to time as you age, it accelerates so much that you lose track of minutes after getting up and cannot leave the house for work in ten minutes after sleeping in as you used to, cannot find where the year has gone when it is already Christmas again, cannot understand why the white hair, where this person in the mirror came from... It is an endless cycle of springs, summers, autumns, winter, a spiral of flowers budding, opening, their petals falling, the fruit within greening, reddening, ripening... 

Looking at the rectangle of my garden filled with more and more bushes, more and more succulents, cutting into the lawn on all sides, I forget how different it is now, from when I first moved in - the wide expanse of the lawn replaced by scattered baby breath, framed by what was a row of six rose bushes but is now connected into a wide border, punctuated with huge green agave that will turn wine red after blooming just once, a tall stalk of small yellow blossoms attracting even more bees than the pink crape-myrtle tree. 

It is this tree that guarantees the flow of seasons - bare branches are covered with pinkish then greening leaves, big bunches of flowers open as the tree is full of miraculous sound of bees, leaves turn lovely scarlet and shine in afternoon sunlight before falling off in December and starting to grow back in April. Meanwhile, colorful gazanias provide rich palette of rusty reds, burnt oranges, and sunny yellows in their year-round daisy-shaped blossoms. 

In the middle of what used to be the lawn, a grove of pomegranate trees has sprouted by itself where I planted one to replace the old tree with rotten roots, toppled by the winter storm. Seeds from fallen fruit sprouted into four more trees, the juicy pomegranates enriching my body with vitamin C and antioxidants in October through December. So many birds poke holes in the fruit, so many fruit bear marks of being bitten by squirrels on top branches, by racoons at the bottom. I do not begrudge them; they have to eat. What's why I do not use any toxins in the yard anymore. Let it all grow and feed the birds and animals; it was their land before me... From January through June, I have my citrus - clementines, oranges, grapefruit. Luckily, my winged and clawed friends do not like citrus as much... 

The old lemon tree was trimmed once and sprouted new branches at the bottom, bearing flowers and fruit year-round. The dried out old trunk needs to be cut down completely. The newly planted oranges grow too slow for comfort, only the fig tree made huge progress and is a real tree after five years of a simple stick stuck in the ground. Of four rosemary bushes that were meant to outline the corners of one flower bed with the fig in the middle, two died out, the other two became a huge, impenetrable wall of rosemary green, giving me ample harvest of twigs to be tied into bunches and placed on top of all bookshelves, all windowsills in the house. 

Time to trim the rosemary - again? When did the branches grow so tall? I have not noticed. Is it time yet to pick the leftover pomegranate shells so clearly seen on the bare trees? Yes, indeed. Time to feed the roses? I used to say these roses were like pets, they need food and water, they need trimming their branches, and, most of all, they need to be admired day after day, year after year... 

So, one morning, while drinking tea and reading The History of England in One Hundred Places by John Julius Norwich, I penned a poem about the seasons in my garden, the seasons of my life:

All Together Now

        for Marlene Hitt, great poet of the quotidian

When time stops 

everything is present

in the same moment.

The gingko tree is green.

The gingko tree turns gold.

The gingko leaves fall down.

Green - gold - and bare - 

All together now.

The pomegranate's twigs,

dark and sad in winter,

sprout thin, celadon leaves,

bloom with orange star-flowers,

carry heavy fruit - first green

then wine red. The leaves

fade and fall. Birds poke holes

in cracked peel of overripe fruit

to feast on tangy, sweet arils. 

All together now - bare -

celadon - orange - scarlet - bare - 

A baby smiles at her Mom.

A child hands her a bunch 

of autumn leaves in the park.

A teen makes a snowman

in the mountains, her cheeks

bright red from the frost. 

A nervous bride in the church,

red-eyed, she cried for days...

A new mom holds her toddler

on her left hip, smiling, knowing.

All together now - I am

a baby, girl, bride, grandma.

I dance the waltz.

I recite poems. I sing carols.

I make costumes for carnivals. 

ornaments for Christmas trees.

I bake their favorite apple cakes

for first, second, third child, 

fourth, tenth, thirtieth birthdays.

Fortieth mazurka for Easter.

Time flies faster and faster

until it freezes - all is one - 

all moments transfixed into

the colorful thrill of the grand 

finale - all together now - 

Life well lived, errors corrected,

faults forgiven, lies forgotten,

blessings cherished to warm the heart

over and over again - 

All together now

All together now - 

when time stops 

everything is one - 

one with the universe - 

one life of mine -  

(c) 2026 by Maja Trochimczyk

That was quite a lot of fun... especially adding that refrain "all together now" from the Beatles' song "Yellow Submarine" visually portrayed in an animated film so full of color, it seems impossible in these times. Nowadays, feature films are dark, filled with explosions and blood... Actually, why aren't there more films with light and color? Or films about the hard work of inventors - the farmers that experimented until they grew a perfect apple tree, the researchers that came up with insulin or antibiotics, the scientists that made the lightbulb, those who discovered magnetism, electricity, semi-conductors? Would a film of efforts, trials and errors, years of rejection and ultimate triumph not be better for our kids than hundreds of films glorifying violence and destruction by "superheroes"?  How about that prisoner who taught himself higher mathematics and while incarcerated had proven a theorem that many struggled for years? How about that grandma that built a huge company - Aunt Jemima until her portrait disappeared from the boxes of food she pioneered, erased by "virtue-signaling" of the misguided lemming crowd?  Oh, well, that's too depressing. Let's think about time again.

Waiting for Eden

​The mohawk haircut of the birds of paradise.

The emerald necklace of hummingbirds

that perch on spiked agave leaves.

The loud argument of male mockingbirds

clamoring to claim my garden for their nests

- melodiously singing for their ladies, 

chasing each other with a hideous screech, 

rough as their Polish name - przedrzeźniacz.

Beneath the soap-bubble sky, fading

from blue to periwinkle and pale rose - 

a sudden silence marks the arrival of the hawk,

stalking its careless prey. Every living thing

has to eat. I'm not that sorry for house finches,

I just do not want to watch them die.

It is January, again. What am I waiting for

in this miraculously greening, rosemary-

scented, overgrown garden? The ripeness 

of winter clementines? The sweetest 

fragrance of orange blossoms? The perfection 

of time beyond time? When hours stand still 

and clocks die with outstretched hands, 

begging the sky for forgiveness? 

(c) 2026 by Maja Trochimczyk 

This second poem is not so cloyingly sweet as the first one, some danger shows its claws. Ah, I forgot, the Moebius strip from the title... I have always been fond of geometry and stereometry in particular. In high school I was the winner of the Copernican Physics competition of the whole school, having made most progress on the solution of movement of spheres upon larger spheres that no boy was able to solve - to the chagrin of my science teachers, surprised that a mere girl was the best. In the last year of high school I scored 142 on IQ test that mostly consisted of estimating the number of blocks in 3-d structures and counting various other things. In that I was "defeated" by one boy who scored 143, one point higher. He was also two days younger than me - being born in January to my December he appeared a whole year younger in statistics and we both were the youngest kids in our class... 

The Moebius strip has no other side, everything is one, all one, back and front, the end is the beginning. As the famous poet wrote: 

​In my beginning is my end. In succession

Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,

Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place

Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.

Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,

Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth

Which is already flesh, fur and faeces,

Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.

Houses live and die: there is a time for building

And a time for living and for generation [...]

From East Coker, I, in the Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot

The master poet continues: 

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,
The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed
With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,
And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama
And the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away- [...] 

This image of the "distant panorama" being rolled away like stage decor brings so many associations, from Platonic duality of body and soul trough Shakespeare to reincarnation beliefs... It is followed by one of the most famous and often cited descriptions of the purpose of life as awaiting resurrections, with the three theological virtues thrown in, just in case...

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing. [...]

From East Coker, III, in the Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot

Death and re-birth. One test after another, one mise-en-scene set up after another, all on the way to perfection, to pure love, to pure being... Paradise. Why would anyone dare to write any poetry after this? Is reading someone else's words enough? What about my reality? My mockingbirds, my pomegranates? My termites gnawing the beams in my old house? Don't they deserve to be observed and described in my own words? So what if it was said again? So what if I repeat myself? Can I not, by my own words, prove my own existence?  The Moebius strip closes, a new circle traces the old one, the cycle of reincarnation draws closer and closer... another round of the Moebius strip will commence...

Moebius strip from Wikimedia Commons. 

Photos from Maja Trochimczyk's garden, 2021-2025

Love After Love - For Valentine's Day

It is a topic of so many country songs, so many romantic sonnets, so many tales and novels. It gave rise to new genres of literature (romance, troubadour poetry) and in other arts (rom com, or romantic comedy in film; the comedy as a classic theatrical genre). After centuries of efforts to describe it, we still do not know what it is. The taxonomies and definitions that I cited in the previous essay are just one way of approaching this elusive topic.

For the Valentine's Day of 2006, I wrote the following short poem, dedicated to my children. It is simple and didactic, defining different types or levels of loving:

Love Defined

Amor
You are beautiful. I love you.

Eros
You are beautiful. I want you. I take you.

Caritas
You are beautiful. I love you. I give you. . .

Agape
Beauty is Goodness is Truth is Love.
Or,
We are.

♥ ♥ ♥


Step by step, the gradation leads upward from romantic infatuation to spiritual Love. At the highest level it is a complete acceptance of Being, the eternal "Amen" - "Yes" resounding from the slopes of the mountains, from the waves of oceans, from the smallest blade of grass and crystal of quartz in the sand. Love is... and always will be, unchanged. To understand it, it is enough to think of its opposite - hatred - and the deafening, blinding "No" that it entails. Denial. Rejection. Death.

The variants of love that I named "Amor" and "Eros" are often intertwined. The presence of "Caritas" and "Agape" may be sensed even in those stages of admiration and attraction. The following poems are selected to illustrate the process of spiritual evolution from love based in need, want and desire to that grounded in compassion and connection through mutual acceptance - the divinely timeless love.

A Chocolate Kiss

You are my chocolate,
my candy, my lover sweet
in the morning,
alive with kisses

My soul rests
like a bird
on your shoulder

I dream of you
daily


♥ ♥ ♥



This free-verse poem has been my favorite among my own love poems, not only because I do love chocolate. It is just sweet. Love for another human being that brings a sense of safety, trust, happiness in being together, in sharing, in becoming one... And then, there is the longing, dreams filled with desire. That is one way of looking at love: the romantic, "Happy Valentine's Day" type of love.

Its strength, from the times of Sappho, has astounded generations of poets, who, like Goethe's Werther wandered around smitten, with the eyes of their beloved blazing in their mind, the feeling of her lips still burning in memory... Petrarch, Dante, Rossetti, Rilke... all lovers of love. How strong could it be? For Sappho, it was like the storm that fells trees, like a lightning. Here's my version of that sentiment:

Lauda

It waxes and wanes
with the moon

It grows and recedes with the tides
flowing through my veins
with every heartbeat

It shines in the dark
like phosphorescent letters
on a child’s shirt

It is so full of color
that it shames the rainbow
and dims the neon glare
of acrylic wonderland

Indestructible
it has outgrown my despair
my anguish, my pride

Like child’s laughter
in an empty room,
like the stillness
of crystal mountain air

Beyond words
love is

♥ ♥ ♥

Now, if love cannot be defined in words, what am I doing, trying to name it and describe it in so many different ways? That, of course, is the task of poetry: naming the unnameable. In doing so, poets have linked love to roses, rich and fragrant, with hues ranging from pure white, through rosy, to intense scarlet and vermillion. Reading the history of roses makes you realize that, although these flowers were found in nature, they were created and re-created in countless varieties by lovers for lovers. The rose gardeners and makers crossed different varieties, spliced the roots of one bush with the branches of another - all in pursuit of that perfect flower. Now, let someone who saw a rose deny the power of evolution, or the human role in evolution...


A Secret

I thought roses.
I thought rich, velvet blossoms.
I thought a red rainbow
from deep crimson to delicately pinkish.

The secret was underground
where the roots sustain
the multi-hued orgy of sensuous allure –
flowers opening to dazzle and fade.

The strength of the rose
is invisible – you see the blush
of seduction in each leaf and petal,

You admire their charms.
Yet, you care for what’s out of sight,
not for the obvious.

I thought your love.
I thought how you adore me.
I went deeper down to the source.

The rose, Sappho’s lightning
of beauty, breathes love,
laughs at the wind, wonders.

The mystic rosebush dances,
crowned with the royal
garland of fire.

♥ ♥ ♥

In this garland of allusions, I managed to weave Sappho with T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets (the end of Little Gidding):

"All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one."

I also thought about Rilke's superb ode to the beauty of roses (Les Roses, translated by Barbara Collignon, VI and XV). Elsewhere he compared these flowers to eyes of butterflies, transient and timeless at the same time:

"One rose alone is all roses
and this one: irreplaceable,
perfect..."

And then, he says:

"Alone, oh abundant flower
you create your own space"

One rose alone ... That is a great idea I borrowed for my next rose/love poem. The "Rose Window" is structured like an argument, in a Socratic style of thesis, refutation, and synthesis. It marries the timelessness of a stained-glass window in a medieval cathedral with the recurring timelessness of petals that grow and fall, grow and fall, ever new, ever old, ever new...



Rose Window

I place you in the heart
of my rose, dark red one,
with dew drops on its leaves.

Like a tricked-up baby
from Ann Geddes’ postcard
you rest, snugly wrapped
in the comfort of my love.

“That too shall pass,” they say,
“That too shall pass.
The rose will wither,
love will fade away.”

Respectfully, I disagree.
I know the symmetry
of velvet petals
is but an opening
into a different universe,
a cosmic window,
timeless.

I see it in the shyness
of your smile. Yes.
You are that lucky.

In the morning,
when the curtains of mist
open above silver hills
carved from time
like a Japanese woodcut,
you taste freedom.

You found your true self
under the detritus
of disordered life.

Isn’t it strange
that you’ve been saved
by the perfection
of just one rose?

♥ ♥ ♥

Too sweet? Too charming? Let me go all the way, then, through a rainbow of hues found in a painting I liked so much that I actually bought. At one of the Poets on Site's Manzanar Workshop projects, I saw a watercolor by Minoru Ikeda, "With You Always." The title reminded me of a Patsy Cline song, and the colors of the hues remembered from the landscape of my childhood spent in villages of my grandparents, and in the pink house surrounded by yellow daisies that towered above my head when I came back to the city suburbs from my summer vacations.

My friend and wonderful poet, Susan Rogers, wrote a poem for her mother, inspired by the same painting, so I'm including my poem here as a gift of friendship. In poetry "I am, you are, we are."



Always

The voice of Patsy Cline
hovers above sweet cuteness of pastels,
brightly hued like the candy
we call “landrynki” and laugh
when the sugar dye paints our tongues
with fake pink and blue, fuchsia and lavender

We walk down a country road
to our pink and blue homes,
in a fuchsia and lavender embrace
under matching, happy hills that sing
“I’ll be loving you, always
With the love that’s true, always”

♥ ♥ ♥

Let us hear the timeless song, then... Irving Berlin's ballad, "Always" - in the voice of Patsy Cline who died too early, leaving us with the unforgettable sounds of her rich, throaty mezzosoprano, country-style, no less: Patsy Cline sings Always.

________________________________________


With the exception of "Defining Love," the poems reproduced here were published earlier, in Rose Always (2011, now withdrawn). "Rose Window" was published in Voice of the Village in the Voice of the Village 1, no. 10, August 2010, p. 27 (pdf download).

"Always" appeared in a chapbook by Poets on Site edited by Kathabela Wilson and including poems written for the 12th Annual Fukuhara Workshop at Manzanar and Alabama Hills, Observations and Interpretations, (Poets on Site, September 2009). The poem was first read at the closing of the exhibition from the Workshop held at APC gallery in Torrance in September 2009.