The Polish Easter of Sorrow and Joy - In Memoriam

It is quite surprising, if you arrive from Poland, to see the American Easter, with its Easter Bunny that lays chocolate eggs (this idea is somewhat disgusting, if you think what round objects of chocolatey hue come out of the Bunny's other end). Another surprise is the obligatory pastel coloring of the entire set of decorations - baby rabbits, baby chicken, baby ducks, puppies, kittens, and all sorts of baby everything, including pastel colored eggs and egg-wreaths that replace Christmas wreath. And, of course, chocolate. Tons of chocolate. It is astounding to see so many major holidays transformed into excuses for buying chocolate: St. Valentine's Day, Easter, Halloween, Christmas... Then there are the pastel dresses and hats of children running around pastel yards with pastel baskets looking for pastel plastic eggs filled with chocolate in pastel wrappers... Actually, I've grown quite fond of this tradition and continue hiding my three dozens of eggs in my front yard for the neighborhood kids for Easter Sunday... We have a street celebration. It is fun to see the kids grow, have their own kids, year after year running to find the precious "golden eggs" with money inside. 

For a Christian from Europe, however, the colors of Easter are different, starker. It is the hue of green palm leafs of the Palm Sunday, the stone bareness and austerity of Good Friday, the vermilion red of liturgical vestments on this day of cosmic suffering, the shadowy darkness and brilliant new flames of Easter Vigil, and the purity of white and gold of the Easter morning Resurrection Procession. I experienced these colors of truly religious Easter at the convent of Fransciscan Sisters, Servants of the Cross, in Warsaw, where I was baptized as an adult during the Easter Vigil on March 30, 1987.  There was not a pastel Easter bunny in sight. 

Listen: "O, Holy Cross" - A Choral song for Good Friday (14th C. Poland)

Listen: Easter Vigil's "Exultet" - with music and text (Gregorian Chant, tutorial)

Listen: "Chris is Resurrected" - A choral song for Easter Vigil (Polish children's chorus)

Listen: "A Joyous Day" - A Choral Song for Easter (Polish children's chorus)

Listen: "Wipe your Tears" - A Choral Song for Easter (Polish children's chorus)

Yes, there are less austere decorations in Polish homes for Easter - eggs colored in onion peel (dark reddish brown), with scratched out patterns; handmade "palms" with colorful dried flowers - a folk-art specialty, the first branches of willows with their soft yellow furry flowers ("bazie"), and the sugar lamb, the symbol of the Divine Lamb, decorating the table and waiting to be eaten, licked into nonexistence, limb by limb.... 

Easter table in Warsaw, 1981, with Marcin Depinski.

Of course, there is food: the meats, the breads, eggs and salt, blessed in Easter baskets. On our table first and foremost was the mazurka, the main Polish cake for Easter. There are many kinds of mazurkas, many flavors (you see three different ones on the picture above). I favored the Royal Mazurka, which, to Americans, resembles a very light and delicate fruit cake (baked without butter or any fat, but with tons of ground nuts, chopped figs, dates, prunes, and raisins).  I immortalized it in my poem dedicated to Chopin and my grandparents.

How to Make a Mazurka

            After Mazurka in A Minor, Op. 17, No. 4,

                        for my Grandparents, Stanisław and Maria Wajszczuk,

                        who could play and bake their mazurkas like no one else.

            Take one cup of longing

for the distant home that never was,

one cup of happiness that danced

with your shadows on the walls

of Grandpa’s house, while he played

a rainbow of folk tunes

on his fiddle, still adorned

with last wedding’s ribbons

            mix it – round and round to dizziness

stir in some golden buzz of the bees

in old linden tree, add the ascent

of skylark above spring rye fields,

singing praises to the vastness of blue

            mix it – round and round to dizziness

add chopped walnuts, figs, dates

and raisins, pour in some juice

from bittersweet grapefruit

freshly picked in your garden

            mix it – round and round to dizziness

add dark grey of rain clouds in Paris

that took Chopin back to the glimmer

of candles in an old cemetery

on the evening of All Souls’ Day

            mix it – round and round to dizziness

bake it in the cloudless heat

of your exile, do not forget to sprinkle

with a dollop of sparkling crystals,

first winter’s snowflakes at midnight 

(c) 2010, published in Chopin with Cherries

If you would like to know what kind of music is mixed like this, "round and round to dizziness" listen to the Prusinowski Trio. Event the dance of the shadows is just right in this visual interpretation of my childhood memory:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfcsTxTKqH0

My kids prefer chocolate mazurka on the layer of shortbread, "kruche ciasto"- with a thick layer of soft dark chocolate, decorated with walnuts and almonds. One year, in California, we put fresh strawberries on the chocolate-almond mazurka - the best ever!  Traditions change, the colored eggs are made of wood and put out year after year...

The Easter brunch comes, or should, after 40 days of fasting, giving up a favorite food, sweets, or deserts, or anything at all that we like too much.  Then, in a village tradition of "przednowek" - the time before the first harvest, the time of hunger -  the starved celebrants gorge themselves on cuts of cured meats, horseradish, eggs, egg salads, rye bread, and a variety of mazurka desserts. 

My Grandma and Mom also made Easter yeast-cake, "babka wielkanocna" - but those concoctions are too hard to do, in my busy lifestyle. They have to cool off on towels in a closed, warm room. In Grandma's house kids were banned from the house, lest they slam the door and the cake collapses on itself, resulting in the barely edible, ugly and squishy "zakalec."  One year, an attempt at a "babka" ended up with a zakalec that was not only completely flat and rubbery, but also burned. It was so bad that even a hungry dog did not want to touch it...

Family holidays with Marcin Depinski, Ania Harley, Aleksy and 

Henryka Trochimczyk, Maja Trochimczyk and Ian Harley, 1999.

It is fun to remember the holidays, the amusing mishaps, the laughter around the table. But all good things come to an end. For me Easter is and always will be also the time of remembrance, a sorrowful time changed forever by a family tragedy.

On the 4th of July 2013 as I was riding in the Poets' Convertible in the Sunland-Tujunga Parade, my Mom Henryka Trochimczyk, nee Wajszczuk, died in Warsaw, after an emergency surgery. Born on December 16, 1929 in Baranowicze, then Poland, now Belarus, she survived an escape from the Soviet occupation, spent WWII as a refugee with 20 people in a two-bedroom house, met my Dad while removing bricks from Warsaw's ruined streets afterwards, became a chemical engineer, worked for Foton (a photochemical company), took and developed lots of wonderful pictures, traveled, sailed, danced, loved people, loved her children and grandchildren, loved cooking and having parties, and loved life...

Shot in her home by robbers on April 3, 2000 (the bullet went straight through her lung, three centimeters away from the heart), widowed in 2001, she never fully recovered, but in poor health soldiered on. My dad, Aleksy Trochimczyk (born on September 25, 1927 in Bielewicze), fared much worse. The killer bullet went diagonally through his stomach, intestines, spleen, liver... After being tied up and left to die on the floor of the house,  he somehow freed himself, dragged his wounded body to neighbors' houses, but in vain... Nobody opened the door, nobody answered. 

Only the next day, fifteen hours after the attack, he managed to get help for himself and my mom, saving her life. His strength astounded the doctors who could not believe that for over a year, until May 11, 2001, his body simply refused to die, against all dire prognosis, against lost hope.  He recovered from sepsis, multiple dialyses, multiple surgeries, blood transfusions.  In the meantime, he managed to tell me some secrets during my repeated visits to the hospital in Poland.  The poem below was written on the way back from the first, shocking trip.

The Polish Easter

Chance. A whim of fate.

A wheel of Fortune

falling off its path.

The bullet pierces the lung,

blood spills in darkness:

shortness of breath,

mouth tied with tape,

agony in the basement

on the cold cement floor.

How does one live after that?

Does one live?

After a midnight stroll

on all fours, searching for help

screaming, unheard?

How does one live 

without the stomach,

kidneys, intestines and spleen?

Plastic pipes carry out

all kinds of liquid.

Seven drains and two IVs

for blood and feeding liquid.

The Polish Easter

is a celebration of

overeating. Food is life.

Would dad ever eat again?

Would mom ever breathe 

without gasping?

Honor your mother and father.

I do.

They did not.

(c) 2000 by Maja Trochimczyk

Written on a plane from Warsaw to Los Angeles, after the attack of April 3, 2000.

That's what Easter means to me: a baptism and two funerals...The end and the beginning.  My father just retired, it was  his first full year in Poland after decades of working abroad. My parents just came back from visiting me in California. They were here for three months - Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year... They went around, to San Francisco, the Grand Canyon, San Diego. They had energy. They had fun. After coming back home, they were getting ready for me to visit in the summer with children. They were planting roses, cleaning up - that's why they went to the summer house so early, when the area was still empty. My mom wanted to have a head start on spring cleaning, planting.  In the evening on that fateful Monday, the robbers cut the wire to the phone, broke in, shot them, tied them, left them to die. Took their wedding rings and the milk money from the purse. There were looking for gold. What gold? In a summer house? There was nothing else to take. The robbers were never found. Four months later, another elderly couple was found in their summer home, shot, tied, and dead. The murderers were never found then, either. 

My father, a half-orphan from a small village of Bielewicze (b. 1927, his birth certificate burned with the Eastern Orthodox church he was baptized in) lost his father when he was 12 and the war was just starting. The teen was resilient, he was hardworking and took care of his mom and brother. Only after the war ended he went on to finish the gymnasium, high school and college. He got a M.Sc. in electrical engineering from the Polytechnical University of Warsaw and worked in the high-energy area of power-plants. He started his doctorate, taught for a while, but then family duty called and he had to earn more money. 

He designed power plants and electrical installations and started travelling to building sites in the Middle East where Poland was constructing these power plants, water desalination plants, sugar refineries, and other infrastructure. He worked in Iraq, he worked in the Emirates. He was very good at what he did. He could not stand nonsense and found an engineering solution to every problem. People loved him, though he preferred books to company. Thus, he made his way through life; took care of two children; traveled to see the world: Italy, Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, Spain. The funeral of Princess Diane in London. Trips to Paris. 

My parents had a rich, busy life and were looking forward to having even more time for having a rich, busy life,  in retirement. Then,  the two bullets ended their dreams. 

Henryka and Aleksy Trochimczyk, Abu Dhabi, UAE, 1980s.

When I posted the portraits of my parents on FB, 14 years after that fateful attack I was surprised by the outpouring of kindness from my friends. I thank them all for sharing their wisdom, advice and compassion with me. It is good to know we are not alone, after all...

 When my parents were shot in a home invasion robbery in Poland at 9 pm on April 4, 2000, I was in my office at USC at noon, just after my morning class. I sat down to answer emails and suddenly I could not move, this incredible peace washed over me, "nothing matters... everything is fine...it is all over... my life is over....it is good"  I was in that state for about 20 minutes, and the next morning got a call from Poland, that my parents were shot and found, alive,15 hours after the shooting. When I arrived in the hospital in Warsaw, my mom told me her experience in detail, that incredible otherworldly peace after life is over that I shared with her on the other side of the globe. That serenity stayed with me for a long time, not long enough..... Fear of death is useless and so is "stay safe" admonition, life is inherently dangerous, we do best when we laugh and love instead of being terrified.

Heartbreaks and Betrayals with Tanka and Madame Butterfly

Here she is, Madame Butterfly, so in love with Mr. Pinkerton, who left her with a baby, and returned with his American wife to claim his son and leave his crying mistress all alone. Susan Dobay's digital integration artwork is inspiring and touching.  Let's see...

Madame Butterfly - by Susan Dobay, 2013

sometimes it comes back

his memory, her softness

their reckless flight

his baby, their child, his firstborn

half-orphan outside

You will be able to see some of this beautiful art at Susan Dobay's next exhibition, "Regeneration" that will be held at the Shumei Hall Gallery in Pasadena and will open on Sunday, April 6, 2014 at 1 to 5 p.m. There will be a concert, too, though not of "Madame Butterfly".... 

Rock Cherries - by Maja Trochimczyk, 2014 

I wrote three tankas for a presentation of Susan Dobay's artwork inspired by Madame Butterfly, Puccini's immortal opera. The presentation, with the accompanying chapbook was one of the string of events associated with the California visit of an extraordinary Japanese poet, Mariko Kitakubo - held at the Altadena Library, and including Mariko's poetry, a segment on Madame Butterfly and Dobay's art, and a Japanese tea ceremony. Since two were included in that performance, I presented the third one here. 

Broken Heart by Maja Trochimczyk, 2014 

Why do we still care about Madame Butterfly? What's most attractive and bewildering in that opera is the perennial conflict of cultures, and betrayal.  The jilted lover commits suicide, like so many others, who could not imagine life alone.  Heartbreak can kill, literally. 

The topic of heartbreak has recently attracted the attention of a young poet, Karineh Mahdessian, who solicited contributions for and published an anthology by women, called "Heartbreak" and featuring "ache" on the cover. There are 80 poems in the book, written by  a diverse group of poets, ranging in age from high school graduates to grandmothers. Some poems are the very first publication of their authors, others are penned by experienced poets and writers with extensive teaching and publication careers.

Karineh's own heartbreaking story inspired her to find compassion and comfort in the words of her spiritual sisters. Her method of compiling the anthology was unusual: she asked poets to send her three poems so she could chose what she liked.  Her choice was only revealed in the final publication. At the reading on March 16, 2014, in La Puente, poets got their copies of the anthology, in burning orange and yellow.

Heartbreak Anthology by Karineh Mahdessian

When leafing through this volume,  bursting with stories of grief and loss about children, mothers, fathers, as well as all sorts of romantic heartbreaks, I realized that my own poem - indeed all poems I sent - were not really heart-breaky at all. It is hard for me to write about things I do not feel and I understood the assignment" to relate strictly to romantic heart-break, as in : </3, or the complaint of a jilted lover. My response to emotional distress of this kind is, by now, of someone who's been there done that, and knows the arts of coping, grounding and self-soothing (or pretends to know).  The point of losing a loved one, or a love interest, is to learn to say, with Hiob, "God has given, God has taken, praise be to God." 

Easier said than done, of course. But ultimately, serenity and contentment are our goals, reached typically in old age. I remember that British study of happiness that discovered that people are the happiest in their seventies, when the ranging storms of passions have passed, the life's work is done, and they spend hours of contentment in their gardens.

New Spring - by Maja Trochimczyk, 2014 

Gardens - the ancient Garden of Eden - the small patio gardens and large botanical gardens - are the true medicine for heartbreaks. Walking, photographing flowers, listening to birdsong, people-watching - all this medicine is contained right there, in the gardens. Those who know how to heal have spent hours digging into the rich dark soil, pulling the weeds out, planting a new flower, a tomato, or a fig tree... Then, they watch the plants grow, and finally enjoy the fruit of their labor - a blossom, a fruit... Perfect! A heartbreak? What was that, again?

Ice Cream Street

Days come and go,

the earth keeps turning.

You left. I am still.

You drive down my street,

come back for another look.

What do you want to see?

Love is not an easy thing

to manufacture.

I make it in large dollops,

served like ice cream

in cups of kindness.

I package it in dulcet tones

of good memories.

It is expensive,

also quite refined.

It is perfect that way.

The world is, too.

Oceans breathe.

Stars do not ask questions.

Night trees sleep

with birds in their branches.

The mountains

 grow more distant,

settling into calm.

(c) 2008, reprinted in Heartbreak from Rose Always (rev. 2011)

Desert Blossoms - by Maja Trochimczyk, 2011

Now, that serenity was not an instant discovery, but a result of years of hard labor. I had to write volumes of distress out of my system first.  Some of this confessional "poetry" is not really of any interest to anyone, except another woman with a broken heart. Somehow, in hindsight, getting these long strings of complaints together seems really selfish. When crying, we do not see the world, for all the tears needlessly spilled.  But at a moment, when the heart is broken, it really seems broken. The world comes to an end. 

As Karineh and her colleagues so eloquently wrote, a heartbreak leaves one feeling literally "broken-apart" - torn and destroyed.  

i entered broken world

i broken entered world

i entered world broken

~  from Karineh Mahdessian's "breaking" in Heartbreak

the words now hardened and metallic in my mouth,

I feel our shared language disintegrating in my hands

dust between the pages...

~ from Alexandra Hohmann's "English Major Breakup" in Heartbreak

the agony of drought
the swagger of flash flood
day after day, no grass

~ from Ruth Nolan's "When Rain Can Kill," in Heartbreak

Fence Geography - by Maja Trochimczyk, 2014

Sometimes, there's a good reason to cry: the mother, child, or husband dies. It does not seem fair. Grief-stricken parent, daughter, lover screams in anguish, gets in a fit of rage, simmers with anger, falls into despair. It is easy to accuse God of being evil at this stage of dealing with a heartbreak. God's indifference... does not God see what's going on? Why is my beloved taken? 

I wrote some of those types of poems after the death of my father who was shot by robbers in his summer home and never recovered, finally succumbing to a long, wound-caused illness.  A bullet tore through his abdomen, spleen, liver, intestines. A miracle he lived through the sepsis. Another miracle: he lived through the multiple surgeries. Seven drains, living on IV food for four months. And then, still alive, a year after that. Through that time, after being released from the hospital, following a six month stay, half of that time in an ICU, he could only eat unsalted mashed potatoes and chicken broth... My mom, who lost one third of her lung to a bullet, cooked and cared for him. His last call: "Majusiu, you would not believe what happened. I changed into a vampire. I live on other people's blood." It turned out his own spine marrow stopped producing red blood cells and he had to have a transfusion every two weeks, and a dialysis, the kidneys were not working either... 

His body fell apart, and our lives fell apart with him. For a long time before that I felt as if I was all splintered inside into a thousand little pieces, pierced by a bullet. On my desk, I even had a hologram of glass breaking apart, forever held together, forever breaking in that image... Then, the bullet, the breaking became a reality.  When I went to an art exhibit at REDCAT once, I saw a mirror mosaic "Resist Resisting God" that did the same to me...

Mirrored by "Resist Resisting God" - by Maja Trochimczyk, 2012

Eloe 6

grief is a thief

and a stupid one at that

he stole your life

when God was not looking

(too busy –

concocting colors

to paint the canyons, stars,

dabbling in sunsets)

(c) 2008, reprinted from Miriam's Iris (2008)

Sunset by Maja Trochimczyk, 2012

There are many kinds of grief and loss, many reasons for heartbreak.  Those caused by others we have no control over: evil neighbors, evil "tribes" - wars, hatred, discrimination, a bullet piercing the skin... Those caused by others we belong with in our immediate communities and families - family disputes, divorces, deaths after a long illness, fading away with cancer...  Those caused by the two persons intimately involved - one person leaves, the other one stays, brokenhearted...

All victims of senseless crime know the first type of heartbreak. The criminal does not know them, yet they suffer, their loved ones die... Here's a different example of the first type of heartbreak, from a post by Carla Tomczykowska, about the family of her husband,a child of a mixed marriage, refugees from Europe: "Polish AND German were his first languages although he was born here. His father, a Polish survivor of Auschwitz, after the war met a German woman and they got married!!!! When they finally settled in the Polish community in Baltimore, she was reviled for her nationality, and as a young boy, my husband suffered from that hatred at the hands of Polish relatives, neighbors and even the nuns at school. This affected him so much, for he loved his sainted mother dearly, that he totally blocked out the Polish language and refused to speak it anymore.... My husband's dilemma as a post-war child was a two-edged sword - he suffered from both being a child of a survivor of a concentration camp (this is a recognized syndrome) and also the stigma (within the Polish community) of being the child of a German woman, being called a 'Nazi.' It has taken him all these years to recognize and deal with these traumatic emotions formed in his childhood."

This is a peculiar, I'd say "linguistic" variant of the loss suffered by refugees and displaced persons around the world. They were not welcome where they went after their homes were destroyed and their lives broken. Not this kind of loss... 

The Heartbreak anthology does not go into these sorts of heartbreaks - consequences of war, famine, crime, natural disasters, floods and fires. Instead, the stories in Heartbreak are about human grief over human loss of just one person, a loved one: a daughter, son, mother, father. The loss of a love. A lover who left, a husband who was not faithful, a child who will not send a mother's day card. 

Mother's day

an empty mailbox

~ haiku by Jan Benson, from Heartbreak

What do they know?

Do they know your smile, your laugh?

~ from Tairy Barrie's "One Tear" in Heartbreak

While reading about so many passionate, depressed, enraged, and disappointed women, I thought I should at least try and write a truly angry "heartbreak" poem, if only to feel young. But I could not quite feel very serious about it, so it came out as a comedy of errors. Enjoy!

The End

I imagined you dead

and me, your widow

dancing in black veils

purple lipstick, amethyst

nail polish.

But you lived.

You came back to stab me,

pour salt water 

on my wounds.

Enough. Dosyc. Basta.

I can't stand seeing you

laughing at my weakness.

Unexplained.

Unforgiven.

I hang my bra 

on my bathroom door.

I pull a blanket 

over my head.

Listen to a chorus of frogs

pairing in the wet darkness

of spring chaparral

Enough. Dosyc. Basta.

It will dry out. 

There will be fire.

It will turn into charcoal,

flames dancing 

with the shadows

on the rim of the valley - 

dying, gasping

with the last breath

of my love.

(c) 2014 by Maja Trochimczyk

Imprisoned Heart - by Maja Trochimczyk

... like a long trail 

that they leave on

me ripping 

open my 

wounds once

again

~ from Toti O'Brien, "Queen of Hearts" from Heartbreak

The Spring... Ahhh, The Spring...

Here, The first day of spring. The Equinox. The day is as long as the night. From now on it will become longer until summer solstice in June. Ancient Persians celebrated it with the holiday of New Year, the Norooz, Nowrooz, or Nowruz in English. On the night before, they had a large bonfire and they jumped over the flames. The moment of passing through the flames was the moment of purification. The fire burned all evil in the past, all bad things, bad thoughts, bad emotions: the horrors, the failures, the hurts. Sins and regrets. Evil burden of rocks carried in the sack on our backs. The fire strengthened the spirit with new life-force, energy, pure light. It destroyed the evil past of dark shadows and gave birth to the light-filled future. Persians do it now, too. It is pre-Islamic custom, from an ancient Zoroastran religion, where forces of darkness and light always fought in the world, in people's souls and minds.

burn, burn, burn

darkness into light

 white fire

Cherry Tree by Maja Trochimczyk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvDxBt9RVKs

Ancient Slavic peoples, including Poles, also had this custom, this ritual of jumping over the fire - only it was held at Summer Solstice in June, on the shortest night of the year. Once I learned about the Persians, I understood why. But I never did that, I'm afraid of fire. I'm not a jumper. Not a sports person, either, except for swimming and sailing. I'd love to have a sailboat on a lake, somewhere. Not on the ocean. I do not like salty water. I do not trust the ocean, I'm afraid of tsunamis. That's why I bought a house in the mountains, on high ground.

drowning

in an ocean of tears

dreams of sweet water

All religions have this element of purification, cleansing the soul, healing in the spring. New light, new life. Freedom and joy. In Christianity we have the sacrament of baptism (I was baptized as an adult, so I remember clearly the moment of passing through from darkness to light), the confession (that one is scary, with so many corrupt priests), the Mass and eating light-filled bread (my favorite), and the yearly calendar of rituals - Christmas, the birth of light at Winter Solstice, and Easter, the triumph of light at Spring Equinox.

sun rises

a round loaf of bread

in pre-dawn sky

Constant Return I by Julian Stanczak (1965)

line follows line
gravitational waves
bend cosmos

In a Japanese religion, or spiritual practice of Sukyo Mahikari, the Carriers of Light, people use light to heal each other. The centers of the palms of your hands emit healing light, pure energy that can be directed at someone's head or body, various "knots" of toxic thoughts, toxins in the body. The light dissolves the knots, purifies. The palms tingle a bit when you do it. I went to a spiritual center several times and was purified in this way. I had lots of "knots" to disentangle, lots of toxins to remove, a lifetime of hurt.

I give you

light filled with light

what else?

If pink wasn't pink

would you 

wake up, still? 

Ambika Talwar, Susan Rogers, Lois P. Jones and Maja Trochimczyk

Susan Rogers, a friend who is a member of this group, is a great poet. In our group, called the Spiritual Quartet and active for a while, we used to call her a "hummingbird" - for she constantly flickers around, is always in motion, always busy. We also had Lois P. Jones, the fiery "phoenix" reborn from the flames of self-destruction, and Taoli-Ambika Talwar, the proud and royal "peacock" (the bird is a national symbol of India, her home country).

birds scatter

feathers dance

on spring breeze

Who am I? My friends called me a "dove"  of gentleness, serenity, and love. I wrote so many love poems, and read them with such affection, I'm just filled with love, or so it seems... But the Dove is also the Holy Spirit, also the bird that Noah sent from his Arc three times to find dry land after the flood. Two times, it came back with nothing, but the third time it brought back a twig of green, for peace, for the end of the flood, for the spring.

above waves

a dove shines green

in sunlight

mirror says

to the sky

I win

orange cup

of nectar 

verdant dream

_______________________

Meanwhile... I went to the Colliding Rhymes Poetry Reading organized by a fellow Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga, Joe DeCenzo. It was on March 16, at the McGroarty Arts Center, in Tujunga, a part of their Arts at Play Festival. I heard some of my most favorite poets - Sean Hill, a hip-hop artist with a heart of gold and the most astounding mouth capable of making sound effects and reciting a whole segment of hip hop, without a single curse!

Then, there was the surreal Just Kibbe, with his text-message-acronym poetry book and the ibis portrait, Jessica Wilson and Juan Cardenas, the bohemian lovebirds - a poetess and her flutist - and Neil McCarthy, still straight from Ireland, and still in his torn jeans and sandals... For this reading, Justin Kibbe repainted his car yellow - for sun, for Sunland - and asked poets to write on it. Here's my poem, based on a saying by Britta Muehlbach of Phoenix House.

Britta says:

"I fearlessly speak

my truth with love"

I smile, in silence

And here's another very short poem... that I saw, but did not write. I like it. We are what we do, after all...

Tulips in Descanso (FB Album)