Easter Wishes and Awakenings

Who said that Easter is about pastel flowers, cute rabbits that lay eggs and are made of chocolate, and fluffy dresses with matching hats? Medieval sculptors, carving the emaciated body of Christ, covered with realistic wounds and blood droplets, had an entirely different vision. Mary of Magdalen had a vision, too: the gardener, she thought, but it was He, and she realized her mistake only when He said, "Noli me tangere..." - "Do not touch me..."

Our love wants to be physical, fluffy, tangible, warm, sensuous. It is very hard to imagine a different kind of love, something greater, unique and universal, human and divine, always the same and always new. The true colors of Easter are the intense reds of the blood spilled on the Cross; the intense purples of coagulated droplets and the sorrow of Good Friday, a day of absence; the dazzling gold shine of flames of a new fire during Easter Vigil; and the brilliance of Easter bells ringing, ringing up to Heaven on that astounding, joyous morning, when all, finally, is well, once for all.

Instead of Easter wishes this year, I wrote a poem about the end of the world. It is really Harry Mulisch's fault. He should not have written that novel about the Discovery of Heaven, which is, actually, about the Discovery of Hell - unseen and distant God takes His Commandments back from the unfaithful, sinful humanity, leaving the traitors to their chosen fate in the Kingdom of Satan. That's what Mulisch's imagined and convincingly described. In the novel, the astronomer who finally discovered Heaven is killed by angels with a meteorite, so he fails to share the secret.

His son becomes the new Messiah, finds the stone tablets, as blue as the lapis-lazuli of his eyes, and takes them up to Heaven, floating in the air, surrounded by a whirlwind of Hebrew letters detached from the holy precepts that were ignored and disobeyed for far too long.



Here's my "Easter Apocalypsis" illustrated, appropriately, with a fading, dying rose.

Easter Apocalypsis

~ After "The Discovery of Heaven" by Harry Mulisch

It is coming. The angels know.
They dwell in their Piranesi castles,
twisted spaces where outside
is inside. They are not indifferent.
Not too smart for their own good.
Not cruel. They don’t tell us.

The end is coming, it is near.
Not death, mind you, not that
Ugly spinster without its twin.
No. The end of the end. Finis.
The satin fabric of a wedding dress
Trails behind the steps of a beauty
Gliding towards her beloved.

The river’s end tastes of salt
In its own mouth, opened widely
Into the waves of the ocean. Nothing
we can do will stop it. Just stretch
Your tired fingers, let the water
Cool your skin.

Why resist? Heraclitus
Dipped his toes in this river.
Shape-note singers praised it.
Saints dove in and swam around,
Luxuriating in incandescent glories
That passed us by.

The end is coming,
Flowing down the slopes.
Let’s sit on the porch, doze off
In honeyed sunlight, before it
Disappears, transfigured.

Let us believe there will be
Light, enough light inside us
- That kindling of kindness,
A half-forgotten smile -
To keep us afloat in the final flood
Coming, coming to erase the world
And remake it, anew, bejeweled.


Now, it would not be fair to all the chocolate lovers out there, if my Easter wishes were limited to this brief vision of the end of the end, a cosmic catastrophe that we will survive only if we allow ourselves to focus on the unbearable lightness of being, the heart of the heart. That happens when we awaken from non-being to an awareness that only what's within truly lasts, that the least tangible of our possessions - a fleeting moment of kindness, a gesture of compassion and comfort - is an eternal treasure, a sapphire hidden in ashes and dust.

I found a treasure this year, I found a friend. I also found a poem in a painting by another friend - a painting I like so much I would love to find myself inside it. Susan Dobay, a Hungarian artist is both spiritual and earthly, a hostess who laughs with her guests and feeds them regional specialties, but scolds them for being too loud when a poet reads something she'd like everyone to pay attention to (even if she is sometimes too busy making sure they listen, to do it herself).


Awakenings

~ after a painting “City Whispers” by Susan Dobay

First to wake: the maple tree.
Up and up, sprouting from a seedling.
With a crown of burnished gold, white
diamond crystals for winter –
It slept through blizzards to flourish
dressed in pinks and celadons.

Second awake: the girl.
Watching the trees from her bed
Or her wheelchair. She cannot go far
Into the streets, filled with noise.
Protected by smooth glass panes
She sees the buds on each twig
Fill out until they burst
Into carmine, wrinkled bows
Small and shiny, maturing
As they change into the green.

The third: a robin calling out
To his friends, dispelling darkness
With his shrill fluted motives.
The spring is woven from his calls,
Warmed up in red feathers on his chest.
He came late to scratch the ground
For a worm to peck, a beetle.
The looping birdsong measures
The coming of days. It floats up and up,
Above the rooftops.

The girl touches her curly blond hair
Growing longer, straighter
As the nurse braids it each morning.
The life, the light, she wishes
For this power to come in.
Make her walk, yes, make her walk.
She stretches up and up.
Outside, city whispers.

It was a distinct pleasure to read this poem while being accompanied on a flute by Rick Wilson: his music rose up and up in the middle two stanzas, appearing after a silence and allowing the tranquility of the sick girl's room to speak for itself at the end. In some way, it was my best reading with music. Rick was truly inspired. Susan Dobay and Mira Mataric said they identified with that handicapped girl, whose longing for wholeness and health is our longing, at other times expressed in the search for perfectly decorated chocolate eggs, tulips and the new spring dress for Easter.

In Poland, we used to say "Wesolego Jajka!" as if an Egg could actually be Joyous. Maybe we have to return "ab ovo" - to the beginning and start anew, with a rediscovered capacity to experience real joy? Before God takes his Commandments back and leaves us all to the dreadful fate of non-existence, without the source of all being? You know, that one: Beauty, Goodness, Truth.

Let the Easter bells ring, ring, and ring.

Alleluia! Pangue lingua gloriosi...


Pangue lingua sung by Coro de Cámara Abadía

___________________________________________________

Illustrations:

Photographs of flowers (C) 2010 by Maja Trochimczyk

Susan Dobay's Painting "City Whispers" - the poem "Awakenings" is a part of Kath Abela Wilson's poetry book project dedicated to the art of Susan Dobay.

Two recordings of bells from Il Duomo (Cathedral Santa Maria del Fiore) in Florence, Italy. From YouTube.com.

From the Canyons to the Stars - No, not about Messiaen

If you never go to any classical music concerts but love art and painting, find some time to listen to Oliver Messiaen's monumental suite From the Canyons to the Stars (Des canyons aux etoiles...). This is cosmic mysticism set in sound, maybe the most powerful and inspiring work of music composed in the second half of the 20th century. Not "easy listening" music... one should say "awesome" - if that word did not shift its sphere of significance to somewhere quite distant from "awe." But you have to find a concert hall where they play this surreal assemblage of wind machines, birdsong, horns and instrumental chorales. This song of praise arises from the orange slopes canyons in the American west (the Bryce Canyon and Grand Canyon were two inspirations) to the starry skies and beyond.

Here's a visual interpretation of the first movement, Le desert, posted on You Tube by JeeRant two years ago. I found only the recording of the third movement, What is written in the stars (Ce qui est écrit sur les étoiles ), possibly uploaded without copyright clearance. Listen at your own peril! There are many versions of the sixth movement for the solo horn called Appel interstellaire (Interstellar call) posted by ambitious horn players the world over. You can listen to it on your tiny loudspeakers, but to have a full experience of the otherworldly music, you need to go to a real concert with live musicians, such as the one by Ensemble Intercontemporain in Athens, Greece.

My canyons and stars are found in poetry, not sounds. I document things that catch my attention in short occasional poems that have no pretense to "Great Art" - these poems are pages from a personal, intimate journal. They capture impressions and reflections from my peregrinations through a southern California landscape, a place of beauty unparalleled in this world or any other.



Only in California

The desert is rich with the noise
of our ghost river, suddenly filled
with mocha cappuccino, a swirl
of white frothy foam on the surface.

Chuparosa and sunrose blossom.
The moving white spot of a rabbit’s tail
disappears between sticky snapdragons
goldenrod and pearly everlasting.

The last red leaves tremble on the tips
of tree branches. The liquid amber
is bare; the gingko, no longer golden,
a skeleton waiting for summer.

One by one, scarlet star-shapes fall
onto the bright green carpet of new grass.
The shoots of narcissus and hyacinth
peek through the weight of dead foliage.

Puffy pink clouds surround the disc
of the moon, shining on the smooth
turquoise. Seasons melt in a day.
The sun smiles at the audacity

of this preposterous, beyond belief,
one and only, California spring.


My dear friend artist and poet and a person extraordinaire, Kathabela Wilson, has lots of great ideas, one of them asking poets to write about gardens and parks. The following two short poems were inspired, respectively, by the Pasadena garden of Jean Sudbury and Vance Fox, and by the Arlington Garden in South Pasadena, planted in the vacant lots that await the construction of the extended 710 freeway. I saw both gardens in the middle of the summer last year, and what a summer it was!



Time Lapse Garden

Arms of the agave
Stretch out to the sky
Waving in slow motion
Trying to stop the train of time
From moving on and on and on
Past fluffy two-color roses
The madness of cactus spikes
And the hammock swinging
Seductively in the shade
When Jean goes by




The Golden Hour

The mockingbird leads a chorus
of orioles, black phoebes, bluebirds,
finches, juncos, and ruby crowned kinglets.
The buzzing you hear is not dangerous,
these are Anna’s hummingbird’s wings.
Birds crowd around the fountain,
water droplets scatter on sandy path.
The afternoon sighs with relief.
All is well and all shall be well
in our garden at four o’clock.

From the desert, to the gardens, to the skies... An image quite different from these photos of leaves captured my attention when I was working on the materials for the most recent meeting of the Polish-American society that I lead, the Helena Modjeska Art and Culture Club. The meeting took place at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, and the Polish-American engineers showed us the sublime beauty of cosmos and the allure of space exploration. Entitled "Cosmos - The Real Poetry," the evening was as educational as it was entertaining. I got some photos for the program and the blog with its description; the beauty of cosmos, indeed.



Cosmos

green rings around a red heart
sing in the darkness, sing
and blossom

light waves dance across
millions of years swirling
within black matter

the stars are born
the stars are dying
dying

green clouds around red suns
bloom in the vastness, bloom
filling the void

clusters of galaxies
expand, crush and collide
the ages turn

before me — beyond me — through me

a spark of cosmic fire
I float upward to the unknown
glow of the timeless “yes”

the stars are born
the stars are born
brightness

______________________________________

I find one constellation especially fascinating. Orion, the Hunter. It is not as clearly visible in Poland as here, in California. It dominates the winter's sky above my home and inspired the following love poem of starry skies.



Orion

I saw you
in his contours, when I looked up,
coming home from a late Christmas party –

My Orion, my bright
hunter crossing the night skies
with a bow strung for action.

Smooth skin shines over broad shoulders,
the three-diamond belt
adorns the narrow waist.
You are a constellation of beauty.

But a seraph? A fallen one?
They say he is “Shemhazai” – the angel
who fathered giants,
lured by the silky faithlessness
of golden hair,
the tresses of seduction.

He crucified himself,
hanging upside down in the winter sky,
remorseful, still guilty of desire.

It fills you to your fingertips
when your hands join together
at the small of my back
and you pull me closer.
I taste the salty drops
of your sweat on my lips.

Swathed in the midnight blaze
I’m waiting for the double helix
of our embrace to twirl
higher and higher,
into a brilliant, fluted column
of light

rising to pierce the indigo cupola
where the stars of Orion now sleep
immutable and content
in their silence.


© 2010 by Maja Trochimczyk

__________________________________________

Photo of Thor's Hammer formation in Bryce Canyon National Park, Southwestern Utah, USA. Photo by Luca Galuzzi (2007), uploaded from Wikimedia Commons.

Photos of California (C) 2010 by Maja Trochimczyk. Poems "The Golden Hour" and "Time-lapse Garden" were published in chapbooks by Poets on Site, edited by Kathabela Wilson.

Photo of nebulae and stars by NASA/JPL, courtesy of Andrew Z. Dowen.

Photo of Orion over Utah's Arches National Park by Daniel Schwen (2004) from Wikimedia Commons.

Poetry Readings in the Foothills

March is the month for poetry readings in the Foothills. On March 4, 2011, I introduced elementary school students at the Pacoima Charter School to the "Chopin with Cherries" anthology (I discuss these two classes, the fifth grade and the second grade, in my Chopin with Cherries Blog).

On March 9, 2011, just before the Ash Wednesday services, I spent 15 minutes reading my poetry inspired by art, and accompanied by the wonderful Dr. Blues, who created different music for each poem. The program, entitled "Imagine Poetry," was presented by the Art, Culture, and Recreation Committee of the Sunland-Tujunga Neighborhood Council as entertainment for the monthly STNC meeting, at North Valley Neighborhood City Hall, in Tujunga. It was a great experience to rehearse the poems with Dr. Blues and see him creating these accompaniments to fit the different mood and imagery of each poem. We went in a circle from art to poetry to music.

I read poems inspired by the art of Phyllis Doyon, Henry Fukuhara, Minoru Ikeda, Saralyn Lowenstein, Stephen West, and the music of Patsy Cline ("Always). I also made photographs and photo collages for some of these poems. Since it was an Ash Wednesday evening, I picked several melancholy and spiritual poems, with only a hint of my trademark "love stories." Here's one example:

Consolation

you too will find the way into the orchard
where green fruit ripens among late blossoms
I found the path, I'm waiting there already

the birds chirp and frolic among the branches
they fly - cheerful in the orange sun

you too -
the path is not too narrow
the gate too distant

will find -
the most amazing jewel
of deep peace

the way -
will open soon
you will see

into the orchard
of love's riches
you will come

(c) 2008 by Maja Trochimczyk

At the STNC Meeting, I ended my reading with "Always" - a poem inspired to the same degree by the painting of Minoru Ikeda ("With You Always") and by Patsy Cline's unforgettable interpretation of Irving Berlin's love-song of the same title. I actually cite two lines from the refrain at the end of the poem; that part has to be sung. The audience typically joins in humming "I'll be loving you always" and everyone lives happily ever after. At the STNC Meeting the audience was silent, though. Having an excellent guitar player at my side, I was transformed into a singer for that occasion. I was later complemented for my lovely voice. Perhaps, I'll start yet another career...

"Consolation", published in my book Miriam's Iris, or Angels in the Garden (2008), though ready for presentation on March 9, was actually not included in the reading at the STNC Meeting. Instead, I will include it among the poems presented during the next Village Poets Reading at Bolton Hall, featuring the Spiritual Quartet of four poets.

The Spiritual Quartet consists of four female poets - Lois P. Jones, Susan Rogers, Taoli-Ambika Talwar, and Maja Trochimczyk. We will appear in a structured program at the Village Poets Reading, on March 27, 2011, at 4:30 p.m., at the Bolton Hall Museum in Tujunga.

Each poet comes from a different spiritual background, while sharing the focus on compassion, beauty, enlightenment, and a creative expression of positive energy. We weave poems around the themes of light, love, forgiveness, hope, and friendship. We contemplate nature, mountains, birds and gardens, and draw inspiration from the poetry of Rumi, Rilke, and from our own spiritual traditions. More information about the Spiritual Quartet and samples of our work may be found on the Village Poets Blog.

The Rilke inspiration for my "Consolation" came from his astoundingly rich, intense, and comforting Sonnet XVII from Book 2 of The Sonnets to Orpheus (cited in a translation by Robert Hunter, 1993):

II/XVII

Where, in what blessed garden of eternally flowing waters,
on what trees, in the cups of which tenderly leafless flowers,
ripen those exotic fruits of consolation ?
Those delicious rarities, of which you may discover one,

in your meadow's trampled poverty. Often, in wonder,
you stand marveling at the size of the fruit,
over its soundness and unblemished exterior,
perfectly amazed that some careless bird or jealous worm
away beneath the root

has not deprived you of it. Are there indeed such trees,
where angels slide, tended mysteriously in slow degrees
by obscure hands, able, though not ours, to sate our hungers?

Could we ever, the lot of us but shadows and shades,
through any act of ours (too soon ripe- too soon decayed,)
disturb the calm composure of those blissful summers?


Since I first knew this masterly work in Polish, it still sounds strange to my ears in English. Knowing the words in two languages, it is possible to detect the undercurrent of the original German. This is one of those poems that touch you deeply, the lines flowing with an overabundance of grace. Everything else I can say about this poem will sound quite silly...

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
___________________________________


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.

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.

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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.


 

What is love? Valentine's Day Reflections

What is love? Expressions like “Mmmm, I love this chocolate…” or “Wow, I love this dress!” somehow do not seem to belong with “Whoever fails to love does not know God, because God is love.” (First Letter of St. John, 4: 8). The month of February is a good time for considering this question since it is dedicated to the celebration of love and romance, with the ubiquitous red hearts, sweets, diamonds, and Victoria Secret’s underwear ads. Apparently, it is also a time for desperate searching for a mate, with the accompanying spike in the use of dating sites and the inevitable incidents of depression.

I know at least one lovely and love-filled couple who celebrates their engagement on Valentine’s Day, and why not? I imagine that such perfectly match paired human beings are like the mystical angelic creatures dwelling in Swedish theologian Emmanuel Swedenborg’s Heaven – eight-limbed, perfectly whole, united for eternity… Swedenborg writes: “The most perfect and noblest human form is that which exists when by marriage two forms become one single form, thus when two fleshes become one flesh in accordance with creation. That the mind of the man is then elevated into superior light, and the mind of the wife into superior heat; and that they then bud and blossom and bear fruit, as do trees in the time of spring.” (From Swedenborg’s Wisdom's Delight in Marriage Love, 201: XVI).

In Swedenborg’s perfect “conjugal union” the male element is wisdom and the female is love. By uniting and exchanging these core elements, the man and woman become whole and perfect. Only together they are completely fulfilled. This vision of coupled happiness inspired the following poem:


Eros 6

we are the walnut
of perennial wisdom

locked together
(two halves in one)
we share one breath
of blessed air

delighted,
we peel the minutes
off the ancient clock



The loving couple defines their own world that they share and that they exclude everyone else from. In their uniquely intimate love, the sexual and the emotional are fully united. Their bond is deep and deepens with time. Eventually, it may seem to be timeless – we hear about couples celebrating their 30th, 40th, or 50th wedding anniversaries and still in love… They are on their way to become Swedenborg’s angelic creatures in married heaven.

For the rest of fallible humans, there are repeated try-and-fail attempts, serial dating, serial marrying, serial heartbreaks. The fairy-tale romances start from love at first sight and continue in the novelty and excitement of meeting the beloved, discovering new things about him or her, knowing them and knowing oneself through them. Poets write about that love, film-makers keep producing romantic comedies filled with surprise romances, ending these made-up stories, for the edification of the masses, at their high points of romantic fulfillment. Dante and his Beatrice? Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet? Goethe’s Werther and his beloved?

Amor 2
You looked at me
and I saw myself
for the first time

I’m beautiful! I’ve heard this
many times before
but did not quite believe

In your hands
love fills
every square inch of my skin

I glow with a brightness
that even your absence
cannot dim


The contentment with having found a perfect, loving partner, too soon and too often gives in to the longing for more, always more – to see the beloved all the time, to glow with the delight of his or her presence, doing the most mundane, silly, every-day things… Does such “love-at-first-sight” exist?

Dr. Earl Nauman in Love at First Sight: The Stories and Science Behind Instant Attraction (Casablanca Press, 2001) claims that it does, and cites a whole series of first-person narrative accounts of its sudden appearance and life-long persistence. The “love-at-first-sight” tradition extends to ancient literature of Greece and Rome, to the story of Narcissus, an innocent youth of such incredible beauty and ignorance that he fell in love with his own reflection in smooth surface of the water and stayed there, transformed into a flower, abandoned to eternal self-contemplation… The psychological disorder of “narcissism” comes from that story. Is all “love-at-first-sight” and its core of desire essentially selfish? Why the success of so many romances in novels, theater, film?

Desire, the heart of erotic love may be understood and explained as a profound sense of emptiness, of needing and wanting someone to be together with, to “have and hold” – as the British marriage vows have it. That longing, in turn, too often leads to disenchantment: when satisfied it may be transformed into boredom, when the satisfaction is postponed, it may lead to disappointment. The heightened expectations are a set-up for failure. And so the cycle continues.

Eros 1

my dreams are simple –
I just want you

today, tomorrow,
in my bed, at my table,
talking on your cell phone,
putting on your socks,
all wet from the shower,
bewildered by the steady
glow of my love,
touched so deeply
that it hurts –

you – just one man
of wicked charm,
strength, wisdom

A friend of mine with a rich romantic history told me of a horrifying moment of self-revelation. While seating in a car with her lover number three, she looked at his hand, that he wrapped around hers in the exactly same gesture as her lover number one used to do. Déjà vu ... She felt the same love, the same elation, perfect happiness of togetherness with both men, yet, they were so different. Was it not the love of that person, then? The love of who they really were? Was it just a sweetly seductive feeling that being near and with these men engendered in her? Did she actually care about them and their dreams or did she just need them to put herself in a dream state of being filled with the ecstatic joy of love? Was it the heightened emotion of being in danger, of flirting and breaking rules that she misread for love?

Amor 6

the more I love
the more dangerous
life becomes
in its graphic beauty
carved with a dagger
stolen from time

the blade cuts
old wounds open

it slides on the skin
of the moment

pierced by knowing


I could end here, by adding a comment from a love-researcher, Stanton Peel who analyzed the phenomenon from a critical perspective in “Fools for Love: The Romantic Ideal, Psychological Theory and Addictive Love.” Peel contrasts “addictive” love filled with pain, “uncontrollable urge and unconscious motivation” with love as a “state of heightened awareness and responsibility.... one that kindles the most elements of feeling and moral awakening.”

In a similar vein, Robert J. Sternberg, one of the editors of The Psychology of Love where Peel’s article was published (Yale University Press, 1988), came up with a triangular theory of love (passion + intimacy + decision/commitment), and a multi-tiered classification of types of love that result from presence and absence of some of these elements. Between the extremes of passion (infatuation) and intimacy (liking), dwells the romantic love. Between passion and commitment you can find “fatuous love” but commitment alone is “empty love” – is it love at all? Just deciding to be with someone without either being attracted to that person, or liking him or her? If you add “liking” – the resultant “companionate love” is what most marriages turn into after 10 years, if not ending in a divorce. Only when the three elements co-exist, Sternberg claims, love becomes perfect “consummate love.”

Are there any other kinds? Let me continue next week...

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All poems cited from Maja Trochimczyk, Miriam's Iris: Or Angels in the Garden (Moonrise Press, 2008).

New Year, New Moon, New Light

Let us talk about the moon, then... In the month of February, the Village Poets of Sunland-Tujunga will present a wonderful, witty and erudite poet, Mari Werner (February 27, 2011, at 4:30 p.m., Bolton Hall Museum, 10110 Commerce Avenue, Tujunga, CA 91042). For her "portrait" on the series's blog, she sent in the following poem, which is so delightful, I decided to reproduce it here as well:

Crescent Moon

by Mari Werner

A crescent moon floats above the horizon.
“You can totally see the rest of it,”
she says, as though the moon is cheating.

And the moon is cheating.
A crescent moon should be
what a crescent moon looks like
in a bedtime story illustration,
a crescent clear and simple,
no dark sphere to detract
from its perfection.

Under the smile of the crescent moon,
she sleeps in fluffy comforters,
winked upon by stars
cuddled by a curled up cat,
guarded by a sleeping dog.

That’s the bedtime story version,
but here on the surface of the planet...
you can totally see the rest of it.

In Polish children's literature, the moon is often presented as a "crescent roll" - "rogalik" - brown, well baked and tasty, neither an alien, eerie source of lunar light, casting a pall on all living things (a la "Pierrot lunaire"), nor a wasteland of rocks and dust that the astronauts have walked on. Not really a place for lunatics, either... A tamed, story-book, crescent.

On New Year's Eve 2010, over a year ago, I saw the moon differently: full, enormous, with a fuzzy halo taking over half the sky. At midnight, it crowned the horizon with its lucid glory. I saw its bluish reflections in water droplets on my rose.
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MIDNIGHT ROSE

"...quanta è la larghezza di questa rosa ne l’estreme foglie!" ~ Dante, Paradiso, Canto XXX

A pale light appeared behind the black ridge of the mountains. The moon floated up like a white balloon losing air, whitening the night around it. The bright halo cooled the glare of electric snowflakes on a Christmas fence, sheltering the reindeer of prickly light points and wire. The moon rose higher, the halo around it grew into a solid crown. It took over half the sky, sparkled in water droplets on the rose. Straight above our heads at midnight, it was a brilliant omen for the New Year.

the moon’s new halo
dims electric glare into calm -
illumination
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As the night wore on, the intense whiteness of the moon at midnight reflected the brightness of my rose-shaped diamond brooch that could have been a heirloom, but was not. I make up my own history here, in the land of endless possibilities, so I have amassed a whole bunch of such "could have been" heirlooms. For instance, I bought my Canadian Grandma on E-bay - a portrait of her, at least. It is a gold-framed late 19th-century daguerrotype of a stern dark-haired lady with hands folded in her lap. Elegant, strong, and confident, with a lovely cameo brooch at her neck, small lace collar, and a wide skirt of a shiny brown tafetta dress - she looks like she could have been my ancestor. I'll adopt her, I thought, and clicked "buy now."

I did not buy the brooch, though, it came from my daughter's prom dress, worn once and discarded after one glorious night. I find its shiny petals a notable addition to my festive wardrobe. Like a magpie, I admire all things shiny; since I lost that platinum bracelet of real diamonds worth a couple thousand of dollars, a gift from my parents, I prefer to dazzle without the expense. I do not think any jewelrer would have loaned me those priceless gems for the Oscars. Here it is, a diamond rose sparkling in my haibun for the full moon.
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MIDNIGHT FIRE

"In the golden holiness of a night that will never be seen again and will never return…" ~ from a Gypsy tale

After greeting the New Year with a Chopin polonaise danced around the hall, I drove down the street of your childhood. It was drenched with the glare of the full moon in a magnificent sparkling halo. The old house was not empty and dark. On the front lawn, boys were jumping around a huge bonfire. They screamed with joy, as the flames shot up to the sky. The gold reached out to the icy blue light, when they called me to join their wild party. Sparks scattered among the stars. You were there, hidden in shadows. I sensed your sudden delight.

my rose diamond brooch
sparkles on the black velvet -
stars at midnight
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