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:

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

My Sky - A Poem of Found Images

I like seeing light in the world, permeating little things, enchanting. I notice its presence with a child's wonder, seeing the world for the first time, as if it did not exist before I looked. Raindrops on leaves are an endless fascination. There is nothing as happy as the grass, covered with dewdrop diamonds in the morning after a short summer rain.

In one old children's poem, shape-shifting clouds take the forms of endlessly changing desserts, stacks of cakes, ice-cream, whipped cream... Unlike the hungry, boy dreaming of sweets, Dyzio Marzyciel (The Dreamer), I don't see food above my head, only magic. The transformation of our world from the profane, ugly and boring to the sacred, saturated with quiet charm may happen anytime, anywhere.

In an instant, I see footsteps of the Greek goddess, Demeter, in another, I am moved to inhabit a painting... It takes just a bit of effort, after eyes are washed of the unwanted images of distress, chaos, pain. I still remember that stain of blood on the sidewalk in Venice, left after a suicide. I still see faces distorted by hate. I want to erase these memories with raindrops on rose leaves.

Some of my roses have impenetrable surfaces, keeping the raindrops round, jewel-like. Other ones absorb moisture in an instant, the drops spread out into amorphous blobs and disappear.

My life, my words, may be one or the other, visible or invisible, remembered or forgotten. I do not know what will happen when I'm gone. Now, this is my time to write, to record the beauty I discover. I am a witness to what I want to see. I could write about the rotten cans and layers of graffiti marring the landscape of the riverbed, and that rusty jeep that was sitting on the shore for years, gradually losing parts to the homeless, selling it off, bit by bit for scrap metal. OK, maybe I'll write about that jeep and the homeless. I already started, but that poem is still unfinished. Too dark, maybe? Too hopeless?

Today, it is time for something sweet. Isn't Halloween the day for treats?

MY SKY

A Poem of Found Images by Maja Trochimczyk


I live inside a painting
by Rene Magritte.


My river is made of silver,


my sunsets of tiger stripes.


I make my own rainbows.


My roses sing in the morning


to a sweet tune of water droplets


playing on the edges of leaves.


Spherical, crystal-clear globulets


of white light adorn each green surface,


like a handful of diamonds scattered


by Demeter, the goddess of plenty.


Water shines in full sunlight -


a child's memory, innocent and pure -


glistening before the breeze stirs,


droplets fall and petals begin their journey


crumbling into dust.

The Secret of Poetry ... and Chopin

Is it hard to be a poet? Apparently, no. Someone said that there are more poets on this planet than ants. I would not go that far, I think that humans are still outnumbered by insects. Nonetheless, I’m constantly surprised and delighted by encounters with poets in so many different walks of life. Before moving here from Montreal, Canada (and earlier, from Poland) I thought that Los Angeles was a place where every second person is an actor or screenwriter waiting for a lucky break. I know now that it is a place of poets and artists. I’m blessed with many new artistic friendships. There are numerous poetry readings across town, there are so many different groups and groupies.

Here in Sunland-Tujunga, a small town in the foothills, we have a museum, art center, historical society, and so much more. Three groups of poets invite members: Chupa Rosa Writers, McGroarty Chapter of the California Association of Chaparral Poets, and Village Poets. There has been a monthly poetry reading series first called The Eccentric Moon, then Camelback Poetry Readings, and now Village Poets Readings. We’ve had festivals and publications, and, since 1999, the institution of the Poet Laureate has highlighted the profile of poetry. What does such a Poet Laureate do? Wonder around in a toga and a laurel wreath?

Maybe once… first and foremost a Poet Laureate is expected to read poetry, write poetry, promote poetry, teach poetry, publish poetry, and breathe poetry… Until 2006, I have never read my poetry in public, nor gone to public readings. I always had poems at home on my shelf, in my native language, Polish, in bi-lingual editions, Italian, French, and in English. I started writing after emigrating to Canada, when I felt completely out of place in my new country and decided to make a home for myself in a new language. I did two contradictory things at the same time: I changed my name back to my impossibly sounding/looking Polish original, and I started writing poetry in English. Thus, I have established a hybrid identity that is from neither the Old World nor from the New one. This fate of not really belonging anywhere is the fate of a “displaced person” who left one country and cannot grow roots in another. Poetry became, for me, a way of “rooting myself” into the new culture, exploring a new world of imagination, and recording & communicating the most intimate thoughts and emotions.

Since I like going to concerts and exhibits, I often write about music or art. This spring, I published a book of poetry about the sublimely beautiful romantic piano music by Fryderyk Chopin, whose 200th birth anniversary is celebrated this year. Called Chopin with Cherries: A Tribute in Verse, the volume includes 123 poems by 92 poets, who live in different countries around the world, but all love Chopin’s music (www.moonorisepress.com/chopin.html).

The title comes from one of my poems, based on a childhood memory of eating cherries while sitting in a tree, and listening to a Chopin concert on the radio. Here it is:

A Study with Cherries

After Etude in C Major, Op. 10, No. 1 and the cherry orchard
of my grandparents, Stanisław and Maria Wajszczuk


I want a cherry,
a rich, sweet cherry
to sprinkle its dark notes
on my skin, like rainy preludes
drizzling through the air.

Followed by the echoes
of the piano, I climb
a cherry tree to find rest
between fragile branches
and relish the red perfection –
morning cherry music.

Satiated, sleepy,
I hide in the dusty attic.
I crack open the shell
of a walnut to peel
the bitter skin off,
revealing white flesh –
a study in C Major.

Tasted in reverie,
the harmonies seep
through light-filled cracks
between weathered beams
in Grandma’s daily ritual
of Chopin at noon.



To honor my other set of grandparents, at the border of Belarus, I wrote about my summer memories of harvest, that even little children had to participate in. Thanks to Polish national radio broadcasts, Chopin’s music was present everywhere and people were all the better for it. Their attachment to this music had a root in national history and in a characteristic trait of defiance, connected to a sense of honor and nobility. During WWII, the Nazis banned Chopin and playing his music in public or listening at home was punishable by being sent to a concentration camp. People grew more attached to it, as a result. On October 17, we remember Chopin’s death of TB at the age of 39. He is long gone, but his music remains to enrich our lives. He worked hard making sure every note was just right. This is how we write poetry, too: making sure that every word is just right.

Harvesting Chopin

After Mazurka in F-sharp Minor, Op. 59, No. 3, for my Grandma
Nina, Uncle Galakcyon, and Father, Aleksy Trochimczyk

The straw was too prickly,
the sunlight too bright,
my small hands too sweaty
to hold the wooden rake
my uncle carved for me.
I cried on the field of stubble;
stems fell under his scythe.

I was four and had to work –
Grandma said – no work no food.
How cruel! I longed for
the noon’s short shadows
when I’d quench my thirst
with cold water, taste
the freshly-baked rye bread

sweetened by the strands
of music wafting from
the kitchen window.
Distant scent of mazurkas
floated above the harvesters
dressed in white, long-sleeved shirts
to honor the bread in the making

The dance of homecoming
and sorrow – that’s what
Chopin was in the gjavascript:void(0)olden air
above the fields of Bielewicze
where children had to earn their right
to rest in the daily dose of the piano –
too pretty, too prickly, too bright



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Published in "Voice of the Village" October 2010 issue. The 19th-century vintage postcard from Maja Trochimczyk's Private Collection.
Yucca blooms in Big Tujunga Wash, San Gabriel Mountains, photo by Maja Trochimczyk. Portrait by Kathabela Wilson, Beyond Baroque, September 12, 2010.