A Tall Glass of Water and Three Blood Oranges - new poems in California Quarterly

The seasons in California are so different from the seasons in Poland. It is hard to get used to, and I always feel bewildered, not just delighted, when citrus fruit ripens on my trees in January and February, so I have a juicy supply of Vitamin C and other essential minerals until at least May if not longer.  Pink grapefruit, blood oranges and mandarine - first fruit shines in yellow and orange among dark green leaves, then the trees will bloom in April, filling the garden with incredibly sweet fragrance. The lemon tree blooms and gives me lemons year-round, so it is not as surprisingly extraordinary as the other trees. 

I celebrate their gifts every morning and wonder why "pink" grapefruit and "blood" orange if they are the same hue inside? 

FROM MINIUM CHRONICLES

               ~ for my children

A tall glass of water and three oranges, 

three blood oranges from a tree I planted

ten years ago in my Sunland garden.

 

A tall glass of water... Am I a lump of clay

that's returning to Earth? Ashes to ashes?

The journey's done, nothing remains?

 

Am I a star of unsung brilliance hidden in a fragile body –

learning, collecting wisdom of limitation, before 

my triumphant return to the glory of timeless Now?

 

Am I saved? Redeemed? Do I need a Savior? 

Am I my own savior, perhaps? What is true?

What is real? Ashes to ashes or light into Light?

 

A tall glass of water and three blood oranges

for breakfast. I'm grateful for the knowledge 

they impart. What I am. What I'm made of.

 

The abundance of rain and sweetness of sunlight

fills the fruit with fragrant, rosy juice, under

the soft, pliable rind – so lovely inside and outside.

 

A fruit of the earth, air, water, fire nourishes me

with elements. The fruit I made that now makes me  

full of morning happiness in the winter rain. 

 

Soothing patter of raindrops on the patio roof

assures me that questions do not matter,

answers do not matter either. 

 

It is the NOW of breathing, of tasting that

slightly tart, refreshing orange I grew, a jewel

I add to the beads of memories I keep.

~ Maja Trochimczyk, January 2022

Published in California Quarterly 48:1, Spring 2022

A garden is a shelter, a hermitage, and an oasis of peace and beauty. I have always preferred spending days in my grandparents' village homes than in Warsaw, full of cement, grayness and armies of red tulips in the spring. The chaos of branches, grasses, bushes, the lovely baby blue sky with white puffy clouds overhead - the buzzing of bees and birdsong. I was able to reproduce this beloved landscape of my youth here in California. Not exactly, in some ways missing the mark - no family here, no Polish language or birds - in other ways even better, with astoundingly beautiful hills and intense sunlight, bringing out colors from the sky, trees, flowers. Colors of intensity unheard of in Poland, where, so much further north, everything is subdued as if a dose of melancholy was poured into each color, each flower, each leaf. 

But life surrounding and sustaining us is as vibrant here in California as there in Poland. As vibrant, as life-giving as oxygen that trees make and we breath, as fruit that used to be cherries, apples and pears, but is not orange, grapefruit and pomegranate.  Blueberries from the forest, strawberries and raspberries growing by the fence - these are missing, my two American blueberry bushes are not doing well in dry California desert heat. But if we focus on the life of each leaf and petal, the vibrant hues and vibrant energy that they bring, we might forget the chaos and nonsense of cities, full of pollution, aggression, aggravation, and pain.

Maybe because of the brilliance of California sunlight, I like so much to write poems about light, light without and light within, shining, shining, shining...

"Diamonds in the Stream 1" by Maja Trochimczyk

 PRACTICAL ADVICE FOR A FRAZZLED PASSER-BY

 

When you reach the nadir of darkness—

shine.

 

When a stranger pushes you on a sidewalk

say, “Sunshine, smile”—and shine again.

Think of the hand of a newborn resting in your palm,

five fingers smaller than the smallest of yours—

a miracle coming into being.

 

Glow

with the tender infinity

of diamond light flowing out of your heart—

your best kept secret—you are the sun, the ascending spiral

of timeless presence—embodied wisdom—infinite charm—

the trinity of loving-kindness—the living crystal

constantly reborn, outflowing from the reservoir

of divine grace you did not know you were—are—

dazzling brightness—sparkling, twirling

in an aetheric waltz of nascent cosmos

that comes into being in you—

through you—

with you—

 

Say YES

so it comes—comes—comes—

again—

 

~ Maja Trochimczyk

published in California Quarterly, 48:1 (Spring 2022)

"Diamonds in the Stream 2" by Maja Trochimczyk

 

Happy New Year 2022 - Water Tiger Year with Haiku Poets

 Lovely haiga - photos or art with haikus - sent in by members of Southern California Haiku Study Group were presented on Zoom on Sunday, January 2,2022 in a presentation hosted by Debbie P Kolodji.  It was a delight and a meeting of friends, some from Southern California, Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego County, others from Northern California and the East Coast.  Debbie brought us all together, created a delightful PowerPoint presentation of haiga riches, and led us through the reading. At the end, she collected ideas for more meetings in person...I'm inviting poets to Big Tujunga Wash in May and June for a walk amongst the towering white Yucca Whipplei flowers, a delight for us tiny Liliputs in the valley of giants... 

So much good poetry, but I only have photos of my own... I looked up what kind of Chinese Year are we going to have and saw Black Water Tiger - so I looked for a stripy photo to match, and found one from Redondo Beach, taken during the Christmas walk with kids and grandkids, some of them, anyway....

Then, I thought I should celebrate the fruitfulness and abundance of the coming year, so our focus is positive and full of trust in the great future we are expecting and will see happening.  I just ate my very last pomegranate I saved for the new year. I kept it on the tree until January 1, and took the photo in mid-December when the gold leaves were still on the tree... 

The pomegranate was rich, almost amaranth in shade, dark burgundy wine hue, or .... pomegranate, bursting with tart sweetness on my tongue.... I wrote many pomegranate poems, the most recent one will be published in California Quarterly 48 no. 1, so here's The Aril from the past:

The Aril

“Aril” is the word for me. 

Not “arid” – as in the desert of wasted years, hours.

Not “arduous” – as in working so hard every day

to make ends meet. These ends, they never meet, anyway.

Just aril. As in my garden at noon. As in ruby-bright 

pomegranate shining in full sunlight. A jewel bowl of arils 

I pick from exploded fruit to freeze for winter. A handful 

of overripe arils that taste rejuvenating, like fine wine.

Tartly-sweet juice stains my fingers burgundy-red – 

or should I say, aril-red?

Oh, the delight of untold riches!

You watch me blissfully chew the seeds

and say in disbelief: “You eat them whole? Really?

When I was a boy, my brother told me that

trees would grow out of my ears if I swallowed 

pomegranate seeds – huge trees would grow 

and grow and grow and grow…”

We laugh at the vision of these arid, forgotten years.

It was an arduous journey that took us through 

the wilderness to this vivid moment of sharing 

this magic, life-giving nectar of arils, 

ruby-red arils.

(c) Maja Trochimczyk, 2021

Last week, as I was driving through our astounding mountains with Ian, my youngest son visiting from Texas, I wrote a poem about what surprised me the most - the river of gold leaves, ash, cottonwood, poplar - at the bottom of the canyon, meandering between steep hillsides - walls of cracking rocks, charcoal-dark from the rain, and sparse dried out bushes... We were driving too fast to take any photos, I'd have to climb half way up the slopes to catch a good view, anyway... 

Here's a photo with Ian from the "Black Water Tiger" beach portrayed above.

Here's my older son's family with my youngest granddaughter, one of them, Aurelia

And here's my second youngest granddaughter, Juniper with her parents, her uncle and grandma.

Andherewe are in Costa Mesa Oso Park, with brand new Snoopy...  

This morning, a haiku summarizing that experience, the contrast of lovely, flowing gold and charcoal crumbling into nothingness appeared out of nowhere. Then, I went for a walk to find some gold leaves -  there were quite a few, from liquid amber, mulberry, poplar, cottonwood, ash, and some other trees that I do not know the names of... Here's the end result - extra leaves as  the background. I actually found all hues of yellow, orange and red, or should I say Napes, Chrome and Imperial Yellows, Gold, Gamboge, Saffron, Amber, Minium, and Ginger, Vermilion, Scarlet, Hematite, Dragon's blood, all the way to Tyrian purple, Archil, russet, Sepia, and Umber... I know the names of these colors now, because I got a new book for Christmas, The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Clair. So vivid, so brilliant!

May your year of Water Tiger be vivid and brilliant -

full of joy, serenity, gratitude and creativity. 

Happy New Year 2022 to everyone!

On Autumn Delights - California in November

 

Since the stream dried out, yucca is no longer blooming, and I cannot wade in ankle-deep water, I stopped going for walks in the Wash. How many times can you walk down the same path and not get bored? I got restless in front of my laptop one lovely, sunny afternoon when the sky was perfect sapphire or lapis-lazuli, so brilliant and the sun just became golden, painting the hills into hues of amber and linden honey.

A surprise was waiting for me among pungent bushes of sage and manzanita - some yucca stalks, dried and lifeless were perfectly golden in the setting sun. So a poem came back home with me from that peaceful walk. 

Fall Yucca

Golden stems shine like beams of sunset

piercing the purple valley that sinks

into darkness under a soap-bubble sky.

The stems lean sideways, imperceptibly falling

- these are our leaning towers of Yucca in the desert 

valley that I make my home. I breathe deeply, delighted 

by the omnipresent sheen and sparkle of sonorous 

cicadas that rush to surround me with their scintillating

songs of summer, before rains silence them into sleep.

Long, narrow yucca leaves gather at the stems

like supersonic star-beams meeting at one point 

on the horizon, blurred by velocity of a Star Wars flight.

They burst out at dusk with a silvery glow 

of moonlight - then detach from their drying stems 

to crumble into the thick charcoal of the earth.

The yucca's white lily flowers have long turned into 

bunches of seed-pods - waiting to fall and germinate 

into spikes of sharp leaves that poke from the rocky soil 

with a promise and a certainty of survival – 

the next year's yucca.  Shadows reveal sparks

of icy stars above me – I walk home, content. 

My rock heart that I wrote a ballad about and kept placing on a little indent in a larger rock is gone, so I found another rock heart and placed it right there. This place I call the Rock Heart Valley, so it has to have its heart!  Nearby someone put together a tall cairn of rocks, so I took a photo  of it. 

https://poetrylaurels.blogspot.com/2019/02/blog-post.html

I'm not the only one here interested in rock art. someone else put together a spiral to walk into and outside. I did that and got dizzy from turning inwards at smaller and smaller angles, until the whole valley was rotating around me, standing transfixed under the sapphire sky. 

The nights are cool these days, winter chill comes out right after sunset, though it still feels like summer in direct sunlight. Roses like it and after slumbering through the hottest months of the year, July through September, they finally started blooming again. I have several new, fragrant varieties to join the pink French Perfume that had as many as 30 roses simultaneously.  The smaller bushes have one or two, but so pretty in their rainbow colors and delicate, intoxicating scents.  Sometimes I stand in front of the rose bush and take 10-20-30 breaths of the rose perfume - aromatherapy done live!  Here's a new poem about the two-color rose, cream inside, blush pink outside, called the Double Delight. 

Double Delight

Gentle as dawn, clearing 

the sky of midnight nightmares 

my November rose smiles to herself 

rearranging the bluh and pink crinoline 

of petals folded into a heart –

her secret within

She tells me to laugh 

and laugh again, overflowing 

with childish joy, champaign bubbling 

in a crystal – while the air around me –

is heavy with cries of panic, anguish, hate.

“What of the news?” you say, 

“Who lived, who died, who suffered?”

I’m silent, exploring the inner landscapes 

that only music knows – the infinity 

of cellos, violins, and the lover’s gaze 

locked in the key of brightness.

I'm grateful for my Double Delight, I'm grateful for my pomegranates, here filled with thank-yous in so many languages. Gratitude is the virtue of blessings. 

Trochimczyk's "The Rainy Bread: More Poems from Exile" in Paperback, October 2021

https://www.moonrisepress.com/the-rainy-bread-by-maja-trochimczyk.html

The Rainy Bread. Poems from Exile. ISBN 978-1-945938-00-9, 

Paperback, 64 pages, $10.00 plus shipping

The Rainy Bread. More Poems from Exile. ISBN 978-1-945938-47-4 

Paperback with color photos, 124 pp. $40.00 plus shipping

The Rainy Bread. Poems from Exile. ISBN 978-1-945938-01-6  

 EBook, expanded version with 60 poems and color photos, $8.00

 

The Rainy Bread: Poems of Exile, a poetry collection by Maja Trochimczyk has been enlarged by 31 poems and reorganized into six parts. An updated e-book is available. The book now includes 61 poems about forgotten stories of Poles living under the Soviet and German occupation during WWII, especially in the Eastern Borderlands of Kresy. They were killed, deported, imprisoned, or oppressed after the invasion of Poland by Germany on September 1, 1039 and by the invasion by the Soviet Union on September 17, 1939. Some of these brief portraits capture the trauma and resilience, ordeals and miraculous survival stories of the author’s immediate family. Their experiences of displacement, hunger, cold, and poverty during the war are typical of Polish civilians. 

Maria, Stanislaw Wajszczuk, with children Henryka and Jerzy, Baranowicze, 1938.

These fictionalized fact-based memories are coupled with depictions of survival of other Poles deported to Siberia, the Arctic Circle, or Kazakhstan; those left the Soviet Union with the Second Corps of the Polish Army under the command of General Władysław Anders; those who were transported to refugee camps in India or Africa; and ended up in Argentina, Canada, Australia or the U.S. Their tragedies and survival stories are not widely known, so it is only fitting that a book of poems dedicated to family and personal resilience would touch upon these forgotten histories as well.

A monument to Polish civilians shot by Germans during Warsaw Uprising.

The book is a companion to “Slicing the Bread” (2014), with which it shares some poems, including vignettes from the author’s childhood in Warsaw. Organized into six parts - Destinations, Nowhere, Hunger Years, Resilience, There and Back, What Remains - the updated book follows a trajectory of descent into the hell of deportations, imprisonment, hunger, mass murder, and ascent into resilience and survival. The dark rain of sorrow changes into the diamond rain of delight with life. Trochimczyk writes: It has been quite difficult to select poems for the "uplift into light" section that brings a "happy end" of sorts to the harrowing experiences of an entire generation of Poles - exiled, starved, murdered. Finally, the idea to bring them to the author's present happiness in the garden, mixed in with some sweet childhood memories turned out to be the the best solution. 

Maja Trochimczyk reads from The Rainy Bread, at Kresy Syberia conference 

in Warsaw, September 2016.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Maja Trochimczyk, Ph.D., is a Polish American poet, music historian, photographer, and author of seven books on music, most recently “Gorecki in Context: Essays on Music” (2017) and “Frédéric Chopin: A Research and Information Guide” (co-edited with William Smialek, rev. ed., 2015). She currently serves as the President of the California State Poetry Society, managing editor of the California Quarterly, and President of the Helena Modjeska Art and Culture Club in Los Angeles, promoting Polish culture in California. Trochimczyk’s nine books of poetry include “Rose Always,” “Miriam’s Iris,” “Slicing the Bread,” “Into Light”, and four anthologies, “Chopin with Cherries” (2010), “Meditations on Divine Names” (2012), “Grateful Conversations: A Poetry Anthology” (2018) and “We Are Here: Village Poets Anthology” (2020). This is her ninth poetry collection.

Nike - Monument to Warsaw Uprising, Warsaw, 2014.

SAMPLE NEW POEMS

≡ ONCE UPON A TIME IN BARANOWICZE ≡

This city is a cipher without a face. Just splinters 

of images caught on paper, my Mom’s old photos. 

A blustery winter street with a round poster stand, 

just like in Warsaw. An opulent interior of the studio

with a bearskin for naked babies. A mahogany stand 

for First-Communion girls, with rosaries and lace gloves. 

Flowers for Marshall Piłsudski, tightly held in a fist

by the prettiest girl, with dark locks of curly hair.

That’s all. No childhood street corners, no velvet 

and muslin curtains. No church bells. 

Some forgotten shrines.

This was the site of battles. In 1916 — 100,000 dead, 

less than the 700,000 of Verdun and known to no-one.

Still, each life matters. Once more: Baranowicze. 

Here, forty-eight priests and teachers murdered 

in cold blood. By Germans? Soviets? The German rule 

meant disappearing in the ghetto. Half of the town gone. 

The Soviet rule meant crowded freight trains to Irkutsk, 

to Arkhangelsk, to Kazakhstan. The Gulag Archipelago.

For me, this city is a cipher, 

only existing as the birthplace of my Mom.

Lucyna tells a different story—bus trips to Świteź,

Mickiewicz’s poems, silver ponds at Grandpa’s farm.

The family home, her Mom says, “stood on the hill, near 

a pine-fir forest, with broad meadows full of flowers 

and all sorts of birds spreading out. Skylarks sang, 

soaring high above the fields. From the courtyard 

you could see dark forests looming in the distance.” 

In May: white bells of the lilies of the valley, 

picked by the bucket. Heavenly scent. 

In July: gold fields in bright sunlight, 

sunflower heads, huge as dinner plates. 

In September: The Soviets came. 

Nothing could save them from deportation — 

ruin — you know — the usual fate. 

NOTE: Quote from a poem by Maria Rorbach, survivor. 

“...stał na górce pod lasem 

sosnowo świerkowym,

u podnóża rozpościerały

się łąki kwieciste z mnóstwem

wszelkich ptaków a nad polami

unosiły się wysoko rozśpiewane

skowronki. Z podwórka widać było

w dali ciemne lasy...”

≡ LANGUAGE ≡

— is all there is, all you take with you when you go

from country to country, carried by the winds of change.

The merciless gale of history blows you backward

to the time before homes were homes,

before love.

Hold on. Language is all there is. You’ll leave 

your sentimental treasures — a miniature

flower vase from your cloistered Godmother, 

brown like her Franciscan habit and warm eyes.

A worn sapphire, set in the ornate gold ring 

Dad bought in Moscow for your Mom’s engagement —

scarred by work and trouble, washing dishes, 

work, always more work.

A suitcase of photos you are too raw 

with grief to open — one day, you say, 

I promise, I’ll do it, one day.

Language is all there is. Words slip back 

under the avalanche of hours. What you took 

was yours then.  What is yours now? 

You left behind your Grandma Nina’s 

Belarussian, her Dad’s Ukrainian.

You did not keep Aunt Basia’s sing-song

intonation from Trzebieszów that crept in

despite Grandma Maria’s fierce battle to 

keep the Polish pure, literary, unspoiled. 

Your kids picked up the dialect of the locals 

in weeks of summer, only to lose it after coming home. 

Alas, your Polish bears an English accent. 

American, with strange rounded “R’s.”

Rough tones of Polish mountain village resound 

through the gilded salons of an L.A. mansion.

They speak a 17th century peasant dialect in Quebec.

Out of one accent, not yet in another, 

you sound foreign everywhere, to everyone.

You keep your words in-between kingdoms.

One day, you’ll find your treasures.

Language is all there is 

until this New Day comes. 

Trochimczyk reads poems from The Rainy Bread in Warsaw, September 2016

Video from the Warsaw Reading on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T_9QDRAxjc&list=PL3q7UTBe4d0f-JhchmDRTqBodFgEOF9IH&index=40

≡ THE ANTIDOTE ≡

Chaos breaks out in our cities full of noise, 

toxins, radiation. I withdraw into my garden,

compress the sphere of attention, 

intensifying the focus on minute details.

The liquid patterns of finches’ song, repeated 

like a broken record. The sediment lines 

on the layered rock from Big Tujunga Wash.

The translucent oval of a quartz stone, 

smoothed by the Pacific on Oxnard Beach.

The imperceptible motion of leaves 

expanding skywards, while their roots 

stretch down invisibly, moist with dew.

Is it not enough to taste a pomegranate,

really taste each tart aril, bursting in your mouth? 

Is it not enough to turn your face up, 

to be kissed by noon sunlight?

“No fear, no hate, not even a slight dislike” – 

says St. Germain. I clear the rubble 

of memories of past pain, stronger, 

more clingy than the pain itself.

The mind is full of useless knowledge.

The body remembers on its own.

Pitiful. The heart locks itself 

in a hard shell of protectiveness.

I have to conquer this chaos within, polish 

the lamps, wash the windows into sparkling 

translucence, letting the light in, clear light – 

the antidote to chaos.

August Tales from the Garden and the Sea

My garden is a refuge and a source of endless delights, even without a side fence removed for the month-long, very noisy construction of a neighbor's swimming pool next door.  The bees in the crape myrtle tree sound almost like those of my Grandma's - from her linden tree. The birds are busy flittering from side to side of the garden, drinking water or picking on my green grapes. The rabbits - yes I have two wild rabbits, or rather wild hares living in thickets under the bushes - nibble on grass blades in the shade, hop around to explore, stop to look at me with the black beady eyes, somewhat curious, but utterly unafraid. They trained us, humans, well, these hares. The dog next door guards them from coyotes, the kids give them carrots. Perfection!  I tried to write a poem about the hare, but it turned into a short story...

When I go out to the front porch in the morning, I am startled by enormous white wings of the great egret spreading out right in front of me. The stream in the wash dried out. We do not poison our yards with toxins. Egrets, hares, and a flotilla of birds come over to eat and drink, enjoy the mini-Eden... Did I mention that there are plenty of bees? Mason bees?

Mason Bees

I share my roses with the mason bees –

Iceberg leaves they like the best, cutting

circles and ellipses from the edge, inwards.

 

Iceberg roses, not iceberg lettuce, mind you,

that’s far too crunchy to make soft beds, wrapping

bee babies in green, white or pink silkiness,

 

smooth and pliable like we ought to be, smiling

under the merciless gale of time, raging river

flowing backwards, always backwards.

 

I used to get angry looking at my mutilated

roses – white blossoms, a defense against evil

guarding my front door like bee soldiers in the hive

 

ready to sacrifice their lives – just one sting

and the miniature fuzzy warrior’s gone – having

lived just to protect and serve us, the worker bees,  

 

buzzing around our lives, cutting circles and

ellipses in white roses. Bees and humans, we are

all children of the Queen Bee, Gaia, our Mother.

 

We make honey of our kindness, virtues, character

wisdom, self-reliance. Attentive, focused on the next

perfect circle, semicircle or ellipsis – we breathe deeply,

 

delight in drinking nectar, carrying pollen of emotions,

sights, impressions – flying back home to make the sweetest

gold, translucent honey of our poems, of our dreams.

 

Published in the California Quarterly 47 no 2 summer 2021

On Thursday Afternoon

Your voice outside my window –

deep, calm flowing inexorably like a river

towards the future we will not know until 

we look back and the past and say:

So that’s what you meant. So, that’s what it was.

Understanding the whole of the whole

that encircles us in a glowing sphere of 

emotions – forgiveness, radiance, joy

of the fleeting moment, The present.

The golden line of a mockingbird song 

weaves in and out of time – I follow

its ornamental thread into the present – 

space opened up by gratitude

blossoming in a smile. 

Sparrows in the birdbath, jet planes

in the sky, hummingbird’s wings, 

the dove’s shadow passing over the lawn

and chimes playing endless variations

of the same melody over and over

until all time ends and we are back

in that singularity beyond all spatiotemporal 

emanations, back in One Love of One 

Mind, One Will, One – Us.

On day trips to the beach, I see sea-gulls, pelicans and sand-pipers when I walk along the sandy expanse. It is the waves and the water that I'm most interested in, the endless soothing rhythm, the untamed energy.  Life itself.  The light that scatters on the surface, the play of the elements - earth, water, air, wind, fire...

The Glow of Forgiveness

Like a mountain stream over rocks,

wearing them out droplet by droplet,

forgiveness flows inexorably to its 

dissolution in the blessed serenity

of living waters of the presence,

knowledge, charm. 

Infinitely self aware and infinitely grateful,

you the forgiving one are also forgiven – 

all limitations removed, all rubble of past 

misfortunes cleared to reveal a smooth expanse

of  sunlit ocean – gold and silver, topaz and jade 

with a sprinkling of diamonds shimmering 

on glass smoothness, scattering around you 

as you float on the surface, resting beyond 

sorrow, beyond pain, beyond time.

I wrote Aquamarine a while back and sent to Carole Boyce, she liked it and included in the "Blue and the Blues" anthology that she published in January 2021. It is a wonderful anthology, and I'm pleased to add some shades of blue to its rainbow.

Aquamarine

lucid

          lucent

                      translucent

                                waves of the Pacific 

 jade, turquoise, aqua

sea foam                in the air                

                sea foam             on my skin

I dance on the currents 

       floating with the relentless motion

          to the shore 

                          to the shore

                                             to the shore

sea foam           on my skin

           sea foam                    in the air

Aphrodite comes up from the ocean

               carried on a dazzling shell by dolphins  

                                                      the wisest of creatures

lucid

            lucent

                              translucent

fizzy bubbles on my tongue – 

                        I swim in the champagne ocean

Salt of the Sol – sunshine of vitality

                                   I praise the elemental power of Water –                                                   

Air – Wind – Earth – Fire

                                     always Fire – ogień, Agni

eternal flames stir the waves 

          into dancing 

                    to the shore 

                             to the shore 

                                        on and on

                                 to the shore

                                                              to the shore

                                                                          to the shore

(c) 2020 by Maja Trochimczyk

Published in "Blue and the Blues" anthology edited by Carole Boyce