Gray sky and green grass!
Barren oak trees looming over head
their leaves now lie on the frozen ground
in colors of burnt siena and brown.
You can touch the freezing air with your eyes, and smell its freshness passing by.
The December moon that peered out from the fog last night
awaits tossing into the air from your fingertips, unleashed from an open fist.
The crunching sound of tiny pebbles underfoot as you step outside,
lingers in the stillness of silence, beckoning a storm.
Between shadow and space, between trimmings and maidens
Endowed with a singular heart and fateful dreams
Dramatically pale and wrinkled on the forehead
And a furious widow in mourning for each day of my life
Oh for each invisible water that I drink dreamily
And all sound that I receive trembling
I have the same absent thirst and the same cold fever,
An ear that is born, an indirect anguish,
As if thieves or ghosts arrived
And in a shell having a deep and fixed extension,
Like a humbled waiter, like a bell with a slightly menacing sound,
Like an old mirror, like the smell of an empty house
Into which the guests enter at night hopelessly drunk.
And there is the smell of clothing thrown on the floor and the absence of flowers,
Possibly in another manner or way even less melancholic-,
But, the truth, suddenly, the wind that lashes my chest,
Nights of infinite weight or substance fall in my bedroom,
The noise of a day that burns with sacrifice
Ask the prophetic that exists within me, with melancholy
And a knocking of objects that call out without an answer
There is a movement without pause, a confused name.
Translation by Georgianna Rivard
En Español
Arte Poetica de Pablo Neruda
Entre sombra y espacio, entre guarniciones y doncellas,
Dotado de corazón singular y sueños funestos,
Precipitadamente pálido, marchito en la frente,
Y con luto de viudo furioso por cada día de mi vida,
Ay, para cada agua invisible que bebo soñolientamente
Y de todo sonido que acojo temblando,
Tengo la misma sed ausente y la misma fiebre fría,
Un oído que nace, una angustia indirecta,
Como si llegaran ladrones o fantasmas,
Y en una cascara de extension fija y profundal,
Como un camarero humillado, como una campana un poca ronca,
Como un espejo Viejo como un olor de casa sola
En la que los huespedes entran de noche perdidamente ebrios.
Y hay un olor de ropa tirade al suelo, y una ausencia de flores,
-posiblemente de otro modo aún menos melancólico-,
Pero, la verdad, de pronto, el viento que azota mi pecho,
Las noches de sustancia infinita caídas en mi dormitorio,
El ruido de un día que arde con sacrificio
Me piden lo profético que hay en mí, con melancolía
Y un golpe de objetos que llaman sin ser respondidos
Hay, y un movimiento si tregua, un un nombre confuse.
Cultivo una rosa blanca
en julio como en enero
para el amigo sincero
que me da la mano franca
y para el cruel
que me arranque el corazón
Cardo ni ortiga cultivo
Cultivo una Rosa Blanca.
Por José MartÍ
I cultivate a rose
in July as in January (Warm or cold, it matters not.)
For my sincere friend
who gives me his honest hand
and for the cruel one
Who pulls out my heart
Neither thistle nor thorn
do I cultivate.
I cultivate a white rose.
“Cultivo una rosa blanca” was written by José Martí, a patriot, poet and journalist, who fought to help liberate Cuba from Spanish rule and colonialism.
The poem, which I memorized eons ago came to me in the night as I tossed and turned to go back to sleep. Funny to have such a memory, but there is a reason for everything. Life can be a struggle and we move through it like water in a deep lake. Sometimes our movements in what ever form they should take are made without thought for the repercussions, or waves they make. Unbeknownst to ourselves, our actions and words may hinder the tender heart of someone whose silent pain we are unfamiliar with, but nonetheless our interactions are significant. We may be the honest friend at times who lends a hand or we may be the cruel friend who pulls out someone’s heart. The point of the poem is to be able to turn the other cheek and forgive, when we are the recipient of some else’s words or actions. The harder part is to realize when we are the one who causes the hurt, or anticipate it before it happens.
Pema Chodrön would say, we all need to lighten up and let it go, and act with kindness and compassion. And then there is the quote by Oscar Wilde, “morality is knowing where to draw the line.” This is a good measure to embrace, lest we should pull out the heart of someone we love, who may, or may not forgive us.
Love
Little stream,
You bursted at your seams
from all the rain that fell.
I crossed your stepping stones,
and sat on a moss covered rock
on the other side.
I reached down and touched
your crystal clear, cold water.
Then, I watched you flow down
the gentle hill, until your winding
glistening rivulets ran out of sight.
Little stream.
By TiffanyCreek
Snow falls to the ground.
Gray sky, bare trees.
A chill in the air,
here to stay,
for today,
I'm afraid -
GRB
The time will come when, with elation
You will greet yourself arriving
At your own door, in your own mirror,
And each will smile at the others welcome,
And say, sit here.
Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
By Derek Walcott
My friend Sally sent me this poem several month ago. I take it as a message to make peace with oneself. Before we forgive others, we must forgive ourselves.
Another version of this theme is found in a jingle my mom taught to me when I left her house one day. It goes like this:
I’ve gone out to look for myself, if I should return before I get back, keep me here.
And finally a quote by David Bowie:
Aging is an extraordinary process whereby
You become the person you always should have been.”
I like David’s quote because we race through life trying to figure out what we want to be and do when we grow up, only to realize that our true selves were within us all the time. I like to relive the idyllic aspects of my childhood and re-create them whenever I can. Things like chasing butterflies and collecting crickets for that much loathed science project you had to do at the beginning of every school year. I hated jabbing those pins into the thoraces of those poor insects and sticking them on cardboard poster board. Egads! then you had to label them. I went back to chasing butterflies instead and looking at wildflowers in the field, and consequently failed the school assignment. I’m happy I failed, because to this day I can come back to myself and the child that lives within, and say:
This is who I was, this is who I am. GRB
Tuesday, July 12, 2022 I love the beach It’s a special place for me I take naps Listen to waves And walk along the sandy edge of the ocean, Watching children make castles in the sand. Dreams of the inhabitants flood the beach My dreams, their dreams, everyone’s dreams. The salty water of the tide moves in and out And sweeps up all these dreams and moves them back out to the sea. Back and forth, back and forth, dreams tumble like shells with the riptide. Dreams that may never come true Dreams unseen in real life Except in the minds of those who dare to ponder that which is possible. A small girl with blonde hair to her shoulders Builds pyramids by the seashore with her dad. Chichén Itzá comes to mind. The re-creation of a place they never heard of before. Maybe shown in a picture, at some time, By some teacher, from who knows where. And it stuck in their mind. As the tide moves in at about 4 o’clock, Most pack their bags to go. Begrudging the work that lies ahead Their feet kick up their dreams in the sand. The lifeguard stays on, Talking away with an older female friend sitting down below. She keeps him company for the day. He talks about the sea, the wild sea so ‘bravo’ from the full moon rising in the sky. Gentle souls were he, and she. And the small blond girl stood before her pyramids Arms extended from East to West Absorbing the current through her veins, eager to gulp her up like a whale. But she stood strong, and firm, Impermeable and invincible against the steady gust of wind, As she overlooked the sea with its fierce and raucous waves. When her father said “Aria, it’s time to go,” A loud and thunderous “No” came from her tiny back turned body, Resistant to a thief who would dare to steal her dream. But she acquiesced leaving her castles behind, like the friendly couple Sitting nearby, she too packed up her things to return to her camp at Burlingame Park. A single colored, sleeping woman, with a indigo bandana, tied like a crown on her head, was awoken from her dream. Startled to find her dry little island in the sand Surrounded by the water, the encroaching tide told her she must flee - To save herself from getting totally drenched. Her dream clung at the edge of consciousness As she raised herself from the ground. The small girl was still standing in the distance with her parents. We caught her eye and waved, she waved back. Then they were gone. Disappeared as if they had never been there before. Their effervescent dreams dissipating like mist into the air. The beach was empty. Only the friendly lifeguard high in his chair was left chatting away, With his older female companion sitting below. Relating his stories of the sea. We too thought it time to go, Reluctantly, we gathered our things. As we stepped away, I searched my pocket filled with two white rocks To see if I had room to take everyone, and their dreams home with me. But no, I too, like Aria had to leave my dreams in the sand. At least for another day. By Georgianna Rivard
First the threading of the needle
that eye nearly invisible
held nearer and farther away,
so the tip of the thread
is a camel through a keyhole,
a rich man
carrying all his belongings
through the Pearly Gates.
But at least near cussing,
you thread the filament
into the orifice. Aha!
The cloth lies on your lap
like an infant in a christening gown,
as smooth under your palm
as your mother’s lost skirts.
The needle slow at first,
jackrabbits straight and true.
The making.
The focus.
The stitching your finger’s mantra.
The finished products of contemplation:
The ties Carver always wears
with his secondhand suits.
And the snickers behind his back.
By Marilyn Nelson
From “Carver a life in poems”
Front Street, Asheville, North Carolina 2001
Nature’s first green is gold.
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
but only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Robert Frost
September is gone. October, begun. The first day of each month is like beginning anew. Turning a new leaf, strumming a new song. I read a poem, by a poet named Wordsworth, today. Quite outdated, but not really. The lines in one of his poems rang a bell, for me. He wrote,
Up the brook
I roamed in the confusion of my heart,
Alive to all things and forgetting all.
… I gazed and gazed, and to myself
I said, ‘Our thoughts at least are ours.
Wordsworth, from “Poems on the Naming of Places”
‘The confusion of my heart, alive to all, forgetting all. “Our thoughts at least are ours”,’ describe the freedom I feel outdoors, and it dawned on me, why it is that I love rivers, streams, lakes, and the sound of water, so. In places like these, I meditate, without even knowing, and feel at peace. Out there, I am not alone.
On Tiffany Creek 