Bird song . . .

He calls the birds down
from the sky, first one,
then another. They perch
on the topmost branches
peering down, as if to see
into his heart and know
with a final certainty
where they belong
in this net of sound
which is part of the trees,
the water, the sun, and in the morning,
this desert altar, replete with conches,
rattles, wooden staves carved
into birds that lift
like waking dreams into the sky,
leaving behind a sweet taste
that lingers, something familiar,
unforgettable, a profound breath
that parts the air in waves
like the wings of birds
moving up, circling once,
twice, carrying my sorrows away.

This poem came from an afternoon hike through the Reserva Ecologica de Chaparri near Chiclayo, Peru. Our hike began with Thomas, our guide from Moche Tours, literally calling the birds down out of the sky by imitating different bird calls. We meandered through the reserve, where we met a deer along the trail, saw the nearly extinct spectacled bears, a burrowing owl, and two condors. We then stopped by a shaman's house to talk briefly of ancient healing rituals. The words "waking dreams" come from this week's prompt from Carry On Tuesday.

Beneath the Surface

We chat at breakfast, our forks
move over scrambled eggs, bits
of ham, the fresh baked roll,
hot coffee with evaporated milk,
cafe con leche in a hotel lobby,
anonymous, and yet, in these moments,
morning begins, another day,
the headlines around us, sound bites rising
like birds to the sun,
hints of rosemary and the sea.

Later we walk where bones were tossed
down the mountain side,
Moche sacrifices made in another time
and at the proper season,
the mountains to the east,
the river below,
140 million bricks for the sacred place of the sun,
and for the Huaca de la Luna, the decapitator,
amid images of the sea, pelicans and cormorants,
a peace loving people, so it was said,
that is before the bones were found.



Yesterday we visited the Huacas (sacred places) of the Sun and the Moon to find the most marvelous freizes, a truly amazing temple, every bit as inspirational as any colonial Baroque church we've visited here in northern Peru. Excavation is slow, much has been lost to looters and the weather. Even photos do not do justice to this main plaza, about the size of two football fields, decorated with five levels of freizes, each level about 5 to 6 feet high, each with a different theme. I can shut my eyes and still see a line of warriors holding hands. Are they dancing? Are they singing? Archaeologists use pottery and painstakingly slow research to name these icons of Moche culture, and change their minds. Behind the temple, the Cerro Blanco, a singular mountain, rises, so named by the Spanish, yet the people here say White Hill Temple is not the proper name. This is the Temple of the Moon.

Additional pictures of the Huaca de la LunaÑ are at www.huacadelaluna.org.pe and www.huacas.com

The prompt comes from Robert Lee Brewer's prompt 046 Beneath the Surface.

If I were on a ship . . .

If I were on a ship,
a clipper ship, with gray waves higher
than any seasoned traveller can imagine,
the ship rising and falling with the swells,
racing against the white caps that blow senseless
in the wind, and the crew, all barefoot,
pulling the ropes that lift the sails
so we could run before the wind. And
everyone suddenly burst out singing,
"Leave her, Johnny, leave her."
and I was filled with such delight
at that chanty call
that e'en the terror of the deep
stayed far below:
"Leave her, Johnny, leave her"
an' the first mate cried "Ho, boys,
Pull, ho!" The ship sailed to the far horizon
and back again, my motley crew around me,
the deep purple sea still
beneath us, no land, no land as far as
anyone could see, God's landscape
flat and infinite.

Drop by Carry on Tuesday to read more in response to this week's prompt.

Peruvian cloudless night . . .

Here, the Pacific Ocean drifts in tide
along this gravel shore,
the waves undulating,
serpentine, infinite.

At night, the Southern Cross rises
low to the horizon, above mountains
as the earth rises and turns.
These fixed mountains remain;
the sun circles to the right, to the left,
months pass, another millenium.

The puma, the serpent, the condor,
transformed and transforming,
feathered serpent, feline jaws:
Incan icons tremble.

At night, the stars burn
an arc in the sky,
across the dark spaces,
the Milky Way splashes across the heavens.
A cloudless night like this
can set the spirit soaring.

One day too late, but still, a poem for Keith Ramblings´CARRY ON TUESDAY, pulling from my reading and study of Incan beliefs and artifacts here in Lima, Peru. His lines to prompt the poem come from Auden: "A cloudless night like this can set the spirit soaring." Very evocative. Thank you, Keith.

164 Worry . . .

Are my Chinese noodles cooked sufficiently?
Should I become a vegetarian?
Have I enough clean underwear?
How many overdue books can I have at one time
without losing my library card?

Will my flesh melt when I die,
or do I care, for then
my sightless eyes will not see,
my mouth will not laugh,
I will not worry about you.

How do we know when a poem works? This little poem started silly, then turned serious. Isn't the world full of worry. Don't we all worry, and only sometimes with reason?

Also, I did want to get on the list just a little ahead of Anthony North, who is always so prolific and prompt with his postings. This week I have access to a computer, so this week I am early, early, early! It's not a race at all. Being part of Sunday Scribblings is like a virtual home, and those who post (and read) (and even comment) seem almost like friends.

162 Disconnecting . . .

It only took a moment. I looked down. My computer bag was gone. Yes, I lost my driver's license, some meds, but mostly I was stunned. Would all my backups function? Had I backed up my poetry as carefully as my fiction?

Only days later did I realize the extent of my loss, pictures of this once-in-a-lifetime trip, six months through South America. Yes, all my backups (flash drive, DVD/CD, e-mailed copies of current work to my yahoo account), all worked. But the biggest loss was being able to write easily, whenever and wherever I wished. Now, only 3-1/2 weeks from home and being able to replace my computer, I'm calmer. I can write in bits and pieces, but I lost truly this last month as well.

Tenacity remains. I scribble on scratches of paper, a new notebook and whenever I have access (internet cafes, hotel lobbies), I try to write something -- bits of scenes, parts of poems, and posts to my travel blog.

What I learned: Back on up i-Google documents, especially when writing on the road. That service is free, private, and accessible from any computer (tip thanks to Internet Writing Workshop, an online writing critique group that shall forever be appreciated for their prompt practical and thoughtful advice). Trust yourself to write, no matter what happens. New concepts, scenes, bits of dialogue, insights into characters, commitments to different strategies for research, all have come my way. Appreciate what you have. No matter what your workspace is, know it, appreciate it! It is your unique writing place, your refuge, your inspiration. That view out the window, the line of books in front of you, the stack of notes, the quiet at early morning. You have made this as surely as any written product. And, if you are traveling, Wrap your laptop in your arms, no matter where you are -- in a bus stop after 12 hours, on the airplane, on a train, sitting in a rstaurant, or even standing on a corner.

We are often told some experiences can never be taken from us. What remains for me is a commitment to writing. I lost a few poems. I lost some treasured photographs. And perhaps several hundred research files. I cannot replace some of the drawings or notes. But I still write.

Leaves quiver in morning sunlight.
A mysterious bird warbles,
and its call is answered by a passing train.
I sit in this garden and watch for the birds
as the sun shimmers on the leaves,
the train passes, the ground rumbles,
and the chip-chip-chip of hummingbirds
punctuates the garden.
Pale white trumpet flowers sway,
the train´s bell makes a harsh last call,
metal on metal clanging, the rails hum.
I sit under this mango tree,
looking up into its green leaves,
where buds hallow into fruit.
The past, the present, the future,
all fuse in the humming bird's call.
The mountains rise around me impossibly high,
but I remain at peace,
connected.

167 Healing

Tourists come here to Cusco
to Macchu Picchu, to marvel at
quaint colonial plazas with arched colonades
that rest on Incan stone.
They pass through churches
as lightly and quickly as hummingbirds.

I am walking in the great central
Plaza de las Armas, blue sky above me
marked by high white clouds.
Mountains surround me
for Cusco is the navel of the world.
I can see the great Cathedral, its
Baroque bell towers rest on
solid Incan stone.

Here in this, plaza, 500 years ago,
Incan leaders were put to death,
great fires consumed their cloths,
fine embroidered cottons embellished
with feathers,
their gold and silver from the temples
melted,
replated on Catholic altars,
each church racing to build the finest church,
Baroque serpentine columns
rise 50 and 60 feet high.
Even a statue of Christ turns black
in sorrow, Lord of Thunder.

I see the bronze cross Pizarro carried,
high on an altar,
read excerpts from old chronicles,
one a 1,200 page letter sent to Phillip the II
that most likely lay unread until found
in a Copenhagen warehouse in 1908.

Guaman Poma de Ayala wrote:
"Our Indians, who may have been barbarous
yet were still good creatures,
wept for their idols when these were broken up
at the time of the Conquest.
But it is the Christians
who still adore property,
gold and silver
as their idols."

How do we heal history?
How do we heal the world?

Peru remains an impoverished country, dependent on tourism, with 50% unemployment. The churches here are marvels of Baroque architecture and a style called Cusconesque Baroque. The Spaniards required the Incans to build churches out of the stones of their temples and taught them to paint and sculpt and carve. The result is subversive and somewhat hidden Incan symbols embedded with the icons of Christianity, the sun headdress adorning the Christian god. At first I wanted to write a personal response to Sunday Scribblings prompt 167 on healing, but this history is unfolding before me. Our world is much in need of healing.


Church of the Company of Jesus, Plaza Mayor, Cusco (source Webshots)

Sillustani

Today we hiked up to the top
of these sacred hills,
past round stone circles,
here for thousands of years,
where amid ruins,
these large round towers stand,
chullpas, just 500 years old,
as high as four men,
bones still inside. Tiny doors face east,
for from the east, life comes
to those who sit inside in a fetal position,
reborn into circular time that moves
with the sun and the moon.
We descend the stone stairway in silence,
facing east, always east,
a translucent moon rising before us;
a petroglyph shows our journey
and our return.


This ancient site of Sillustani, above Lake Umayo, has perhaps been used as a cemetary for 10,000 years. Petroglyphs (a journey circle, a lizard) have been dated to 8,000 BC, and subterranean tombs have been documented to around 500 AD (Tihuanaco), 1000-1440 AD (Colla), and 1440-1532 (Incan). Our guide told us that those buried inside these towers always face east because "we are beings of light, and from the east comes life." He also talked about the duality of life, a kind of tension between the sun and the moon, earth and sky, male and female, even water and plants. This separation continues: Even young men do not wear the hats of women, but wear the hats of men, peaked hats, shaped like mountains. Perhaps the women's hats, rounded bowler hats, symbolize the earth. In these sacred places, he said, any one can breathe in the spirit of the sacred mountains and the sacred lakes. We came here by tour, just outside of Puno, Peru. Read more about Sillustani at Wikipedia. Note the Wikipedia site says the towers (chullpas) were built by the Colla people: our guide told us the towers were Incan (typical large square stone blocks). Even today scholars have not replicated their building process. More photos at Andy's Sillustani page.

To the Lady of Ampato

I'm high in the Andes Mountains.
The bus curves around foothills,
stark sand dunes lead to rocky cliffs,
salt crusted, and at the top, snow.

No one could live here.
Yet 500 years ago, people came,
wearing sandals woven of grass,
climbing up these mountains,
carrying what was most sacred
to the highest point of Mt. Ampato.

This ice princess began with unnamed
warm ocean currents.
The shells turned red and white, bad omens,
the elders said, the mountains,
talking gods, began to belch smoke and fire.

She was born in the most propitious time,
her auspicious umbilicus saved
against that day she would transform herself
withh sea eyes, to become protector of her people,
one who walks-with-gods,
the beautiful one, the pure one, perfect,
wrapped in sacred prayers.

Placed just so, wearing gold ornaments
and wrapped in red and white, she could see the future,
the deep black sky sparked with stars, ahead,
the curve of the earth. She was one with
the Apu, the spirit of the mountain, her
eyes open for all eternity, a bridge,
a song, prayers burned into her bones.

The bus moves down to Arequippa. We pass
a road side altar, a Christian cross
entwined with pink and white plastic flowers.
I remember the ice princess, Juanita,
a child among children.

Juanita (so nicknamed for her discoverer) was sacrificed to the mountain spirit of Mt. Ampato some 500 years ago. Her mummified remains were discovered by Johan Reinhard in September 1995, in a gully surrounded by ice. Recent volcanic activity and perhaps earthquakes had caused her body to be dislodged and fall down the side of the mountain, a trail of artifacts spreading behind her. Today she resides in the Museo de la Santary, in Arequipa, where she can be visited from May to September. Her offerings included three small hand-sized icons of copper and gold, dressed in exquisite textiles and adorned with feathers honoring the moon and earth, the water, and the sun. While we may remember the horrific human sacrifice of the Aztecs, both the Mayans and the Incans also sacrificed humans, but at a much lesser scale. Only 18 of these children have been found at the top of mountains throughout what was once the Incan Empire, spreading from Peru south through Chile.

Please visit the Museo de la Santury for some dazzling pictures of the Ice Princess, some of the artifacts she was found with, including her red and white huipil, and, of course, the mountain.

Ars Poetica

Each day begins with faith
that word will follow word.
This is my ars poetica,
my house I build
stick by stick
and stone by stone,
my soul space between my hands,
my dreams
as harmonious as a white moon
rising imperturbly
through the night.

Crack me open.
Seeds spill out
from heart and bone.
They float and dance,
a mystery, a joy.
As I write, the very pulse
of the mountain shimmers through me.
I can see into the eye of a spawning salmon.
For a moment, the shape of an aurancara tree
is fixed, its bristling branches spread out
in two directions, to the earth, sloping down,
and to the stars, curling up,
a poem.

This poem is posted in response to Poefusion 36, to explain what a poem should be, inspired by the magnificent Ars Poetica by Archibald MacLeish. Sunday Scribblings' prompt this week is simply ¨"follow." Some of you readers know that I'm traveling in South America. This last week has been a challenge for my laptop computer was stolen in a very small town in southern Peru, after a 17 hour busride. While I did have backups, I was shakey over the loss and very uncertain how I could write without a computer. I posted a query on Internet Writers Workshop, their Writing listserv, and cannot tell you how wonderful it was to hear from other writers and to have a solution that brought me back to the keyboard and writing in only 2 days. So part of this poem is a celebration simply of the ability to write.

#159 Quipu . . .

I stand in front of this quipu,
the second one I’ve been close enough
to touch with my own hands,
this strange belt of long, knotted strings.

When the conquistadors came
to the land of the Inkas, the Mapuche, the Wari,
these quipus were burned, idolatrous.
Only later scholars discovered these belts,
made of woven llama or alpaca wool,
knotted in units of ten,
these “talking knots” carried information
from kingdom to kingdom,
high along the Andes trail,
the knots their own language,
a chronicle, a census,
accountable, transparent
in their fragile white, red and black twists of wool,
some knots figure-eights,
more than numbers, sacred colors, stored infinity
that, it is said,
a few could read with their eyes closed,
their fingers “telling” the knots.

In the whole world, only 600 quipus remain.
This is one.
Not all that was burned is lost.
Some things are known and not told.


The Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino, here in Santiago, Chile, has an amazing collection of Pre-Columbian artifacts, including textiles and this one quipu. I read scholars are now finding possible clues about the “language” of these quipus in paintings of textiles and pottery. I was still very moved to see this beautiful quipu and so wrote this second response to Sunday Scribblings' prompt on Language. The image comes from Wikipedia.

#30 Neruda Retold: Fable of the Mermaid

Sometimes mermaid stories are about an ugly side of the relationships between men and women. Here, I followed Poefusion’s prompt to make a new poem by adding lines of my own between the lines of this mermaid poem by Pablo Neruda, still one of my favorite poets.

What was learned? That poets work in tight levels of meaning. I went online to post my version and discovered another Poetfusion poet, Gautami Tripathi, also working with a Neruda poem. Ha! And then I traveled up to La Sebastiana to walk through Pablo Neruda’s home here in Valparaiso, Chile. No photographs were allowed, but my eyes are full of this wonderfully creative space.

You can read Pablo Neruda's original version here: Fable of the Mermaid and the Drunks

"Neruda Retold: Fable of the Mermaid"

All those men were there inside,
as if they were waiting
when she came in totally naked.
They had been drinking: they began to spit
and laugh as if they had been given a toy.
Newly come from the river, she knew nothing.
She was as perfect as the moon.
She was a mermaid who had lost her way, and
the smell of the sea filled the room.
Their insults flowed down her gleaming flesh.
Obscenities drowned her golden breasts.
Not knowing tears, she did not weep tears.
Not knowing clothes, she did not have clothes.
They blackened her with burnt corks and cigarette stubs,
and rolled around laughing on the tavern floor
until one by one, they became quiet.
She did not speak because she had no speech.
Her eyes were the colour of distant love
shaming the men before her.
Her twin arms were made of white topaz
that burned those who touched her.
Her lips moved, silent, in a coral light
scream and the room was empty of life.
Suddenly she went out by that door.
Entering the river, she was cleaned,
shining like a white stone in the rain,
and without looking back, she swam again
swam towards the deep sea, swam towards life.

#159 Sappho's Language

The two poems lie side by side.
Their words float off the page,
their meaning some place
between two mirrors.
The serpent uncurls and in an instant
all is known and then lost.
I look each word up
in the dictionary of my imagination,
but the nuances shimmer, love,
the letters flicker and twist,
transforming what is known
into something strange and new,
perhaps close to what the poet cried
in her dreams.

This week's Sunday Scribblings asks us to write about language. I remembered reading Pablo Neruda to prepare for a competency exam in Spanish. No matter how long I studied the vocabulary, the meaning in translation kept shifting. I found a book once that had Sappho's fragments in the original Greek and wondered how we could construct meaning out of a partial poem over such a distance of time and culture. Sometimes I think poets write in a very personal code, adding another barrier. Even our popular vocabulary changes over time, so that what once was a "good" translation of a classic sounds somehow off and not true to the writer's intention.

April 15: Earth's Hair . . .

If I could count the hairs on your head,
I would count each one
with pine needles frosted white, or
as elm leaves drifting yellow in the wind, blowing free,
or in the tiny filaments of jellyfish swimming,
swimming in the sea. I see cities ratcheted up
your hills and at night, stars scattered on the ground.
And if I were lonely, I’d wrap myself
in dreams of you and never sleep.

Tuesday's Title from Poefusion is "Earth's Hair."

Offline for awhile . . .

Just a note to say I'll be offline until April 15. No computer access, and I'm not paying 40 cents a minute. But, I'll be busy trying to write a poem a day for April, National Poetry Month, and the challenge from NaPoWriMo. So, go ahead. Join in. Write a poem.

#156 On Aging . . .

This week's Sunday Scribblings asks us to reflect on aging.

I thought once I would die young for I never saw a tall person, and very quickly, at the age of 12, I grew to be 5’8”, tall for a girl-child and still tall for a woman.

I loved the lines of Rabbi ben Ezra, “Grow old along with me, the best in life is yet to be . . .” Isaac Asimov included those lines in the opening of his Foundation series, which I discovered in my teens when I read science fiction by the box. Later I learned Robert Browning wrote this poem, and other lines jumped out: “What I aspired to be, / and was not, comforts me.”

Melina Mercouri, flush with fame for her portrayal of a prostitute in Never on Sunday and appearing on an Ed Sullivan show, said something like, “Get that camera in here close. I want it to show every line. I have lived and I have earned these lines.” There was a woman I admired. She was not afraid of her age.

Other lines, from Omar Khayyám's Rubaiyat, have stayed with me: “I come like water, like wind I go.” And in a cosmic sense, Robert Frost, that great American poet, wrote “Fire and Ice,” which neatly puts the fate of the world and all of us accountable.

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

I was a quiet little kid. I wore glasses, read books, was last chosen for games, and the first to move to a new town or a new family. My childhood I now remember as a steady stream of argument, fueled by cases of beer and nights of brutality. I somehow reached 17 and wrote a desperate (and most likely horrible) poem that ended: “There’s no such thing as a future, whether good or bad,/ there’s only the past, taunting you with things you’ve never had.”

My aunt took me away, and my life changed. I went to college and worked to pay for it. It took me 11 years to graduate, working full-time after those first two years at a community college. Now and again, a teacher would encourage me, and this made all the difference. Of course, I became a teacher myself and at a community college. I could help others as I was helped. My dreams of somehow creating a harmonious family, loving my husband and a child – all came true because of the generosity of one person.

So I would say aging, if we are so lucky, is about understanding our lives, the choices we’ve made, and how each decision, each act shapes us and those around us. So many times, we seem afraid of death, and yet, death is the natural end to all of life. What is aging but a preparation for death?

If we are so fortunate to have a long life, then these last decades allow us to come to terms with who we have become. Each day thus can be a gift to appreciate and celebrate. I remember my 20s and 30s, and even into my 40s, as a struggle to become something I could barely imagine. But now, in my mid-60s, I can simply be.

It’s early morning, and the yellow-breasted kiskadee begins its song to wake the sun. Today, we leave on a grand adventure, to do something I once read about in Richard Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast – we will sail around the horn at the tip of South America. My suitcase is packed. My computer is nearly ready to go. And I am thrilled to be able to say to my husband, “Grow old along with me. The best in life is yet to be.”

#155 I come from . . .

I come from the country, an
estancia so far from the city that
only the men go on horseback,
driving the cattle to market. When they return,
we’ll set up the barbeque on the patio.
The old men will play their guitars,
and the women will dance. Ah, I remember last time.
I could feel Renaldo’s eyes on me
as I placed a vase of yellow flowers on my head,
fanned my skirts back and forth, and
placed my feet just so.
Singing, I danced faster and faster,
my hips moving,
the flowers steady and true.

I come from San Telmo, a barrio in Buenos Aires.
I sit on my third floor verandah each morning,
hidden from the crowds below. I sip hot coffee.
The sugar from my sweet rolls sticks to my fingers.
Parrots nest high in the nearby palm trees, and
red flowers bloom in a Ceibo; later,
I’ll twine them in my hair when I dance the tango.
Ah, Renaldo, I long for when you come to the city.
I will put my black dress on and dance with you
cheek to cheek.



The startling scarlet flowers of the Ceibo, also called seíbo or bucaré, are Argentina’s national flower, as the tango is Argentina’s national dance. We’re only in Buenos Aires one more week and then back on the road (without internet for 10 days). Already, I’m thinking of April and napowrimo, the challenge of writing a poem every day for a month. Will you do it?

#154 Buenos Aires, March 2009

Her head was found. They say
the rest was scattered.
Desaparecidos, they call these lost ones.
30,000 disappeared
sometime between 1976 and 1983.

I stand in the Plaza de Mayo,
wondering again about violence,
remembering when I was young.
Would my mother have worn a white scarf?
Would she have walked slowly
in a circle past the soldiers,
so slowly as to be eternal?


Our guide tells us the women still come here to the Plaza de Mayo, each Thursday at 4:30 pm, circling the plaza silently, holding photographs of those who were lost. A passing man interrupts our guide’s explanations. “Do not step on these symbols. They represent 30,000 lost.”


He tells us more; our guide interprets. Finally the man leaves and our guide continues. “We do not support these women today,” our guide says. Other Argentinians in the group nod. “We support them, that is, their main idea and honor what they have done, but today, there are two groups, one is made up of mothers who pressuring the government to admit its culpability; they take money from the government. The other group is made up of the grandmothers seeking to reunite those children who were adopted with their real past, which is very difficult.”

The sun flickers on his face. I do not really understand his distinctions, though I learn later that the more radical group also blames the United States for training Argentina's military in the controversial School of the Americas. The history of Argentina’s “Dirty War” and the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo is summarized more fully in two Wikipedia articles I found useful.

I look at the round plaza and remember learning of these women from newspaper accounts when I was in San Francisco in the 1970s. I marvel I am standing in this place, in the shadow of the Casa Rosada, the Argentinian equivalent of the White House.

#153 Did you . . .

Did you pinch your daughter’s hand
because she didn’t mind you quickly enough?
Leave your three-year old alone in a motel?
Feed him beer because he was crying?
Hit her because she laughed too loudly?
Lock your child in the basement?
Or worse?

Your child will never forget.
You can’t take it back.
You can’t say “I’m sorry”.
Those memories won't go away.
Remember this. This is important.

This week's prompt from Sunday Scribblings asks us to write about something that is truly important, something you notice or would like to say. This was my first reaction. Child abuse takes so many forms, not the least at the macro level being poverty. Many adults struggle the rest of their lives to heal themselves from what happened when they were vulnerable and unable to defend themselves. So, what you do forever shapes a child (and their children), whether you are parent, teacher, or even a babysitter. Be mindful. Be gentle.

Last Night . . .

Last night, I dreamed
I was floating,
past your embraces,
past your eyes
frozen in dreams.

We have slept in how many cities,
walked through plazas together,
heard the night birds sing,
and watched the stars fall out of the sky,
always together. Yet the day comes
when, like a star
that follows its own path,
revolving slowly,
I will tumble into the future, alone.
 

Anoche

Anoche, soñé
yo flotaba,
por delante de sus abrazos,
por delante de sus ojos
congelado en sueños.

Hemos dormido en cuantos ciudades,
andado por plazas juntos,
oído las aves de la noche cantan,
y mirado las estrellas se caen del cielo,
siempre juntos.
Aún el día viene cuando,
como una estrella
esto sigue su propio camino,
giramiento lentemente,
caeré en el futuro, solo.



Note: I'm still working on this poem that came to me partly because I was studying Spanish before sleeping. If you see changes needed in the translation, please tell me. Otherwise, be assured all is well.

#11 Read Write Image . . . Reflections

No winter bites as cold as this.
You’ve hidden your face
behind a mirror. I remember each line,
the mole, the crease on your forehead,
Behind you I see leafless trees
like lacey fingerprints atop the snow,
and snow falls everywhere.

All I want is to see your face, still hidden,
your hands curled like two lost dark geese,
the mirror a perfect oval, mysterious, unknowable.
The hills stretch out endlessly behind you.

Someone who loves you knit those gloves
and tied the belt on your coat, long ago.
Yet you stand before me, fixed, invisible.
Maybe I see myself in your mirror,
a nameless tree against a cold and foggy sky.
I’m wondering just when winter will end.


This week's prompt from Read Write Image #11 uses this evocative photograph, "Reflections" taken by Camile Tulcan, shared thru Creative Commons. Although I do try to write in response to ReadWritePoem, this time the poem "Reflecta" by Gordon Mason led me to this prompt.

#151 Would you trust . . .

Would you trust a jubilado
dancing in the street?
See omens in a cloud of green butterflies
settling just ahead of your path?
Stare into the red heart
of a Rose of Sharon.
Touch the points on a nettle?
Bathe your face
in the mist of a waterfall?
Look into the eyes of a stray dog
that follows you?
Count the fingers and toes
of a newborn babe?
Hear the telephone before it rings?
Dance without music?
Dream without sleeping?
Say yes before the question is asked?

This week’s Sunday Scribbling’s prompt is trust, a very difficult prompt. I wonder if we trust our ability to understand the reality that exists around us, that we perceive or define by our senses. Though I do not, or do not trust that I do, some of my relatives seem to have an extra sense. Also, jubilado is Spanish for retired person. As a relatively newly retired person, this word fascinates me for its very different connotations.

Some people have asked when Standing Stones will be finished. I do work every day except travel days, and now am revising Section 3 (out of five sections), focusing mostly on plot holes, logical connectors, and character development. I’d like these characters and their predicaments to be as real to a reader as they are to me. I hope to have one more go through for style and estimate I’ll be ready for my 3 readers by June or July, if all goes well. Six weeks in September/October brings the last bit of research and editing, so I hope to finish completely by December 2010, making it about three years overall for this novel. After that, the story’s no longer mine. Wish me well.

#150 Soccer . . .

There’s nae sport in it
if ye canna’ play the game, twist
yer head down, scrub the dirt
off yer leg, and curse
and hope and flail after the ball,
down the grassy field and back,
and hate the other side
‘till the whistle calls done.

There’s just that moment,
an ye don’t know it then,
when the ball sails past,
an yer boot taps it so
it flies good and true.
They look at you different then;
all the rest is remembering.


Tall, skinny, clumsy, and wearing glasses that were too expensive to break, I was last called and played little in the streets when I was a kid. I never understood the thrill of sport until I met up with a group of women over 50 and played my heart out on the soccer field.

#149 Morning poem . . .

Chip-chip-chip the beja flor
calls: Awake. Awake.
It is the last day in Ouro Preto, this valley
of nameless trees and red tiled roofs
brightening in the morning sun.
Trucks lumber up cobblestoned streets where
last night orixas and students danced
in samba, lace, bead, and drum, joyous.
So many have slept
anonymously, abandoned,
to waken here, in your room, Pablo Neruda,
whose lines make me want to sing.

The morning does begin here in Ouro Preto with hummingbirds, and last night students did dance in the streets, practicing for Brazil’s famous Carnival. This week’s prompt from Sunday Scribblings is simply art. For every person who takes pen or brush, and dedicates time, talent and effort to express some interpretation, past the senses and rhythm of pure line and color, to heighten our awareness of the meaning of life, I wish another someone who looks deep and says: Ah. Yes.

148 Regrets . . .

For how many years have I known
your heart is larger than life;
its beats numbered like mine,
but with fewer days. So we embrace
the future without looking back,
here in this land of baroque hotels,
bus drivers who slide by trucks
and pedestrians by inches.
We stroll past palm trees and jacaranda,
orchids at eye level. Tonight I sleep
where Pablo Neruda once slept. I look with his eyes
on this colonial town with amazement:
How is it possible I have lived to see this day,
another day with you? We have memories,
enough for a lifetime or two, maybe three.
Should the day come when I sleep alone,
I will remember here, this moment, and you.


This week's Sunday Scribblings was hard to write. We're on the road today from Belo Horizonte, in Brazil, to Ouro Preto, finally a smaller colonial town of about 40,000. Pablo Neruda did stay once at the Pouso do Chico Rei, a hotel with its own interesting history, and, I think, internet in the lobby.

147 To Yemanja

Imagine a town each February 2 that closes its shops.
All the people come down to the water
wearing transparent beaded necklaces and
bringing gifts, little boats
filed with flowers and perfumes
to launch into the sea.

They come, singing songs and dancing,
the people of the town down to the water,
near the Rio Vermelho, the beautiful brown women
wearing gowns the color of the sea,
bearing gifts they come singing to you, Yemanja,
orixa, Princess, oh, Janaina, Queen of the Sea,
mother of the waters, of the storms, of the fish,
in your honor, the sweet perfumes, the rejoicing.
Even the cat prowling under the tables of Mama Bahia
for scraps of fish
has eyes the color of the milky green sea.

How I long to dance with the people
along the beaches here in your town, Yemanja,
in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil,
a town once of fishermen
who went to the sea in small boats,
while women waited and prayed by the shore.
Now all shadows and phantoms
they come from the past,
their boats filled with flowers and perfumes.



Here in Salvador, Saturdays are consecrated to Yemanja, the queen of the waters, ruler of the upper sea, a goddess (orixa) in the condomble religion. Most commonly shown as a mermaid, Yemanja appears in many forms in this city where people still gather on the beaches each February 2 to offer her gifts. We are in Salvador just two more days, so this week’s Sunday Scribbling’s prompt of “shadows and phantoms” came clothed in her story. The photograph is part of a monumental painting hanging in the lobby of the Pousada do Boqueirao, by an anonymous folk artist.

146 A Pilgrimage

I have climbed the lower hills of the Andes
and walked in the alleys of Cairo.
I have waited in the rain
to see the works of Vincent Van Gogh in San Francisco.
I traveled to Turkey to stand in the Blue Mosque.
I’ve cranned my neck at the Sistine Chapel.
I touched the granite rocks of the pyramids at Giza.
I have heard the monkeys call, one to another, in the Yucatan peninsula, and I have climbed Mayan temples to the very top.

I have dreamed my way through books and paintings,
I have fallen in love
and have mourned the loss of those I loved.
I have held my daughter in my heart from the beginning,
I have followed stories of mermaids
and found my own place.

What a jostling pilgrimage of sorts my life has been –
an immersion into nearly five decades of work.
Even so, my memories flash all colors;
I would give up all my travels,
all my writing and remembering,
to walk with you in our own garden.

Though I found myself looking back rather than forward, what an evocative prompt from this week's Sunday Scribblings. Check out what others have thought.

#145 Organic . . .

Sunday Scribblings this week asks us to define O-R-G-A-N-I-C, so:


Whole Food organic baked beans
Organic food baked
Beans whole
Food

Whole earth organic cocoa crunch
Organic earth cocoa
Crunch whole
Earth

I remember the first time I ate granola, visiting a hippie commune in the wilds of northern California. We women helped to build a yurt, made yogurt from what I thought was spoiled milk, and baked bread with joy. By day I worked for a bank, surrounded by suits. On the weekends, I lived in a counter culture. One day I realized my friends wanted to throw bricks through the front window at my bank. And then I read the politics of protest, “Chicks up front,” and disengaged.

Today, organic is a line of products; national debate rages over what constitutes a legal definition of organic, so necessary for labels. I see now “organic” can be defined as essentially commercial, at least in our capitalistic society, having little to do with individual freedom. I would rather define “organic” as in harmony, as in “at one” with the Earth, but we seem a long way from that definition. Individual actions can shape an “organic” whole, but not necessarily in the way the individual intends. I still do like granola.

#144 For richer . . .

As I walk along Sao Paulo streets,
the people stroll, no rush
here, arm-in-arm they wander as slowly
as if they were in a museum,
talking softly as they go
from one block to the next.

Later, I stroll as they,
past orchids growing wild in trees,
bouganville, impatience pink and white,
and margharitas,
yellow hibiscus, nameless others;
the smallest yards tell me stories
of fallen palm trees,
clipped shrubs and forget-me-nots.

I climb the yellow brick stairs to the Pinacoteca,
walk past portraits of another era, painters
as unknown as flowers, who saw with brushes
grasslands, mountains and the people there,
fishing, reading, sitting in transplanted
Victorian living rooms, still sighing sadness.
still singing with joy.


This week’s Sunday Scribblings asks what we are richer for . . . for me it is the gift of experience and interpretation that we create through writing or other arts. For me, travel gives me the ability to explore other cultures through meeting and talking with people, visiting museums (like the Pinacoteca do Estado), walking through parks, and, not least, eating delicious food with Allen. Yesterday we discovered the painter Jose Ferraz de Almeida Junior (1850-1899). He lived to be only 49, yet his paintings of Brazilian rural life continue. And I am richer for every painting I see, every book I read, each friend I share my life with.

Sporadic internet . . .

Just a note to say that today we turn off internet in our Vancouver apartment and so I don't know exactly when I'll be able to read all the wonderful posts from writers on Sunday Scribblings or update this blog . . . as we land in Brazil on January 1.

If you want to follow along our travels through South America for the next six months, jump over to Beth on the Road. For now, be assured the writing continues. I wish all who stop by a New Year filled with beauty, creativity, and harmony. Be well and be at peace.

I believe . . .

For every moment spent doubting, I believe in love. As Rabbi ben Ezra says, "Grow old along with me, for the best in life is yet to be . . . " That phrase has followed me throughout my life, at first a hope, then a promise, now after nearly 35 years of marriage, a commitment. I don't know how many years we will have left together, but that love that once seemed so unattainable, so out of reach, so beyond my ability to connect truly with another person, now is my center, the beginning and the end.

I'd like to believe the best of others, except those who drive like crazy people (anyone who comes too close to the car I'm driving).

I believe each person I meet has a past I may not know, but that I respect, a present I am a part of, and a future full of potential, regardless of age, gender, race, orientation, or personal beliefs.

And for underlying beliefs, the belief system I'm most comfortable with comes from the existentialists (like Sartre) who confronted the tragedies of World War II. These ideas still seem valid to me, post Iraq. Even if God does not exist, say the existentialists, we exist. We have a choice. In fact, we are doomed to choose those acts that resonate within a moral code, that respect human life -- and that respect human effort and creativity. I hope to live in ways that follow these beliefs.

This week, the Sunday Scribblings post asked us to write about what we believe. Read what others have written in a remarkable online community by going to Sunday Scribblings.

#142 Late . . .

The rabbit knows.
Down the hole he falls,
head first. He’s late, he’s late.
Alice follows through the looking glass,
to some wild tea party
under the trees of summer.
But I’m late. It’s snowing steadily now.
The leaves are long gone.
The tea party's forgotten.
I could run madly
like the rabbit, but
snow covers the way.
Solstice promises aside,
winter lasts a long, long time.

Today the Weather Channel warns of blizzards along the Columbia Gorge through Sunday. This snow is not exactly "late" but somehow echoes in this week's Sunday Scribblings.

#5 Red Tide

They swim together.
The fish around her,
their eyes open, her eyes closed,
trust the pull of the tide.
Fish of every color,
yellow, green and red,
follow this tide up river to the place
of beginnings,
marea creciente, rising tide.

Fish eyes know the sea and the river,
ebb and flow, seeing and not seeing,
from marea viva, spring tide,
to marea muerte, neap tide,
so many days, so many nights
of swimming into smaller and smaller
channels, still trusting the way.
Not even a siren in the sea
counts time.



NOTE: This Monday's ReadWritePoem features this beautiful drawing called "marea roja" by ladyorlando. I hadn't visited this site for a while and was surprised and then not surprised by yet another sirena.

#141 Winter Garden . . .

This winter garden
rests neatly on my palm.
Black slate covers the roof
of a gazebo, winter chrysanthemums
bloom frosted red and yellow,
Fresh snow edges bare trees,
perfectly miniature.
A tiny gravel path winds
past a clear pool just frozen.
Golden carp float
fast asleep,
all carefully balanced,
worlds within worlds.


This week's prompt from Sunday Scribblings just came to mind, the idea of a garden floating in my hand, silly, but it came to me instantly!

The Rajah Quilt . . .

This morning's research introduced me to a treasure -- the Rajah Quilt, hand sewn by women prisoners as they were transported by sailing ship, the Rajah, from the Pentonville Prison in England, to Hobart, Australia on a 5-month journey in 1841. The quilt, lost for decades and recovered just 20 years ago, is shown publicly just once a year at the National Gallery of Australia.



I can imagine these 180 women aboard the Rajah, a sailing cargo ship. For the next five months, they endured crowded conditions, were buffeted by storms, and yet they created this quilt. Each had been given a personal bag filled with sewing materials and two pounds of cut fabric scraps, granted by the Quaker group, the British Ladies Society for the Reformation of Female Prisoners, so the women would find "industrious work" during the voyage. They sailed into the unknown, from one prison to another.

The quilt was presented to Lady Jane Franklin, wife of the governor of Tasmania (Australia), John Franklin, the famed Artic explorer, later lost in his quest to find the Northwest Passage (from Greenland).

I'm seeing a swirl of links to my novel-in-progress set in the Orkneys, Scotland, in the 1840s. Captain Ferguson of the Rajah took shelter from a storm in Stromness. He later married Kezia Heyter, the young woman sent by Elizabeth Fry to accompany the female prisoners. Some articles say Heyter was a matron; some say she was simply a passenger. I've thought of Elizabeth Fry as well, for she was a fearsome reformer, though she died in 1845. Yet her relationship to Kezia as mentor is an interesting one.

I'm still struggling to understand marriages in the upper class; no better model could be had than that of Lady Jane Franklin to John Franklin, both explorers, both independent. She wrote often to Elizabeth Fry, yet there is tension among historians as to her actual role in helping the female prisoners. But the good materials are all in the collections of the National Library of Australia. No time to order interlibrary loan. Sigh. So now, enough research! Back to the writing.

140 Tradition . . .

This week's Sunday Scribblings' prompt asks us to write about tradition.

When I was 15, my grandmother sewed a quilt for each grandchild, hand piecing the tops despite her arthritic hands. Mine was vividly colored, Grandmother’s Flower Garden. I loved that quilt.

I have read of quilts made to mark the way along the Underground Railway, but this may be a combination of memory and myth. Log Cabin, Bear’s Paw, Ocean Waves, to me, these names spoke of our history. I could imagine women quilting in cabins across the plains and in the Pacific Northwest; some quilts evoke the home country left behind (Irish Chain, Dresden Plate), or mark the poignant passing of one generation to the next (Wedding Ring, Grandmother’s Flower Garden), or inspired by the Bible (Jacob’s Ladder, Rose of Sharon).

Everywhere we travel, I look for quilts. They speak to me of similar dreams and love of color, history, and family. In Egypt, elaborate quilts are still made in an open air market that once were traded along the Silk Route. African warriors wore Fulani stars quilted into their cloth armor for protection. From Japan, we see quilt patterns with dragonflies, fans, lanterns, kimonos, and Torii gates. From Alaska, quilt designs highlight the wilderness with bears, eagles, mountains, trout and the forest. And in museums I see quilting and appliqué that women have created for thousands of years to embellish their clothing, blankets, and wall hangings.

Tradition

I’ve often been asked why I quilt.
Sometimes my hands hurt
from cutting fabric
as the scissors slice through bright colors.
Why would any one dedicate
so many months to make something
that can be so easily bought?

I first began to quilt
in memory of my grandmother;
her stitches held together my family in ways
I couldn’t foresee. And when I left home,
I took her quilt with me.

Now I appliqué the edges,
turn the fabric again and again
into a pattern, inventing as I go,
the curved edges turning
into flowers light and vivid.

I think about the person I love as I stitch,
the person who will one day lie beneath this cover,
sometimes dreaming, sometimes weeping,
perhaps comforted by this quilt
that I have made.

When I am no longer here,
for that day comes,
perhaps who made the quilt
is not so important.
This quilt may comfort a child or two at nap time
or be put on the back seat of a car for the dogs.
My hands are content as I remember
my grandmother.



I’m just finishing the last bit of binding on this flower quilt for my cousin, adapted from patterns in Joyce M. Schlotzhauer, The Curved Two Patch System. You can click on the image to see the quilt more clearly.

Proud Bookworm . . .

I stopped by Anthony North's blog to read this week's Sunday Scribblings to find this Proud Bookworm Award and challenge:

THE CHALLENGE: Pass this on to five other bloggers, and tell them to open the nearest book to page 46. Write out the fifth sentence on that page, and also the next two to five sentences. The closest book, not the coolest, or the one you think will sound the best. THE CLOSEST.

I looked longingly over at my nearby bookcase and crate of books, but there on the top of my printer, the closest book just in from amazon.com lay. I opened Orson Scott Card's Characters and Viewpoint to page 46 to find only these two concluding sentences:

“But the stories that astonish us, the characters that live forever in our memories – those are the result of rich imagination, perceptive observations, rigorous interrogation, and careful decision-making.

When it comes to storytelling, invention is the mother of astonishment delight and truth.”

Ah, that was reward in itself. I hereby invite you to take on this challenge as well as these kind visitors (if you like): Granny Smith, Anno, Paisley, Rambler, and Sunshine.
Your prize? This retro graphic with thanks!

#139 A Winter Tale

This week's Sunday Scribblings asks us to write a winter tale. Here is a beginning . . .

Once upon a time and very far away, near a scattering of islands in the southernmost sea, lived a pod of young mermaids. They sang songs, played surfing games in the sea, and chased fish to eat. Each day was endless. At night, they floated to sleep under the light of the moon.

As each mermaid became a certain age, she consulted the Book of Mermaids about her quest. One by one, the mermaids disappeared until only two were left, Dariella and Marel, the youngest mermaid. Marel wanted to leave their island home together, but Dariella insisted on going first. “This is the way of our people,” she said. “I must go on my quest alone.”

The next morning, before the sun came up, Dariella swam north, leaving Marel behind. “If I do not return, you know what to do.”

Day after day passed. Marel waited, thinking perhaps today would be the day that Dariella would return, flashing through the surf. Each morning, Marel searched the waves, looking for her sister. The palm trees and the sandy beaches were unchanged. Dariella did not return.

Marel found the Book of Mermaids hidden in a cave on the north edge of the island. She opened its silver leaves edged with seaweed, and learned she was to swim out into the deep sea, survive a storm, and find her destiny. She closed the book and hid it under the rocks.

On the last morning, Marel swam in ever larger circles around the island, hoping to find some hint in the deep green sea of what direction she was to travel. Suddenly, a storm blew up, and she could no longer see the island for the mountains of waves that thundered out of the north.

Marel was tossed up on the white breakers and down into the deepest troughs. She flailed against the dark waters, and even though she was a mermaid, she feared she would drown. As suddenly as the waves came out of the north, so they returned, carrying Marel with them in a torrent of black waves. With each moment, Marel became colder and colder until she was as cold as the ice that surrounded her.

She swam with the waves, sometimes floating, until she came to a curious island far to the north that was made of ice, where a majestic creature sat on a throne of silver, four large polar bears protecting the woman who sat there. A wave pushed her onto the island.

“Ah,” said the creature, “the smallest and youngest mermaid. I see the Book of Mermaids has called you here. You have come to join them, the very last of your kind.” She waved her hand, and Marel could see all of her sisters floating below her, frozen blue in the ice. One of the polar bears looked at her with great black eyes and growled.

“What would you wish me to do, oh majestic one, to meet my quest before I remain here?” For Marel knew that no one, not even the Queen of the North, could refuse her a quest.

The queen sat still and thought long. She roused herself from time to time to pet one of her polar bears, causing a shimmer of ice to fly out from her long dark cloak. Finally she said, “You must bring me proof you have caused a sailing ship to founder. If you do this, you may remain free.”

“What about my sisters?”

The queen of ice lifted her head and laughed, a sharp sound that cut the air like glass. “Go. I will think on your request and give my answer when you return. Mayhap you will find a pretty for my bears.” She laughed again.

Marel slipped into the icy water and began her long swim straight to the southern coast, where great craggy mountains rose from the ocean. Perhaps she would find a sailing ship there. And if she did not, she would see her sisters’ blue faces floating forever in her dreams.


. . . to be continued

#138 Grateful . . .

I’m grateful for my cot.
It’s everything I’m not
portable, comfortable, and shiny.
I’ll disassemble it in just a month; I must
take all my courage. I’ll thrust
it into storage, where it shall not
travel south by plane like me,
where once again, I’ll be free
and on the road.

Instead I’ll fall limitless into summer – yahoo!
Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, and Peru,
they all beckon me south,
filling my eyes, ears and mouth
with delicacies and dreams unexpected.
I only ask what harm,
with my writer’s notebook under my arm,
could I come to – so unprotected,
as I embark on a low-key, six-month travel,
what mysteries soon to unravel?

A teacher once told a student never to write a poem that rhymes. I say, “Why not?” Although I’m grateful for family and friends, for each day that brings sunshine, libraries, art, and writing into my life, and my husband most of all, even if he adores football, we’re getting ready to travel to South America for six months. We leave December 31st, so this poem came this morning as a kind of preparation, just in time to be grateful again to the wonderful community of writers on Sunday Scribblings!

#137 Stranger . . .

What could be stranger than
walking on two legs, bisected
by knees that bend only backwards,
or feet adorned with just five toes,
and hands with four fingers and
only one opposable thumb?

What could be stranger than
breathing air instead of water, or eyelids
that blink up and down?
What could be stranger than speaking words,
having a birth day, or eating fish but not the bones?
What could be stranger than putting on a watch
as if we could measure time?


Read other writings in response to this week's prompt from Sunday Scribblings, stranger.

Unguarded Utterance . . .

Just a note to say my poem "History Lesson" was listed on "A Dozen Poems this November," chosen by S. L. Corsua and highlighted on her poetry blog today, Unguarded Utterance. That's a first! Thank you, S. L. Corsua.

The other eleven poems listed made for interesting reading, if you are so inclined.

On writing query letters . . .

Each day that I write, I've been editing and revising my historical novel, Standing Stones. Two resources have been very helpful -- the generosity and insights of writers participating in the Internet Writing Workshop and Elizabeth Lyon's Manuscript Makeover. Today, the Willamette Writer's newsletter highlighted a You-Tube presentation by Elizabeth Lyon, my editing heroine, speaking on query letters (just 8 minutes long).



I've heard other writers say that their characters come alive, hold conversations, and otherwise pester the writer to tell "their" story. I always thought this was silly, but in this second year of writing, my characters have begun to infiltrate my dreams. I awake with whole scenes that need to be integrated here or there or new insights into my characters that really do tell me what's next or explain what happened. Some days are slow. I feel inept as a writer. But then, a bit of research opens up new understanding or confirms what I thought I knew. And so I persevere. Perhaps one day I will actually finish this book and be at the stage to write that query letter. For now, I just write.

#135 Scandalous . . .

This week's prompt from Sunday Scribblings is Scandalous. Today is Election Day. I don't want scandal. I'm not sure I even want long lines at the polls. I'm still remembering the scandal of the Bush/Gore election decided by too few votes and administrative fiat in Florida. I'm hoping it doesn't come down to that, again. The real scandal for me is in not trusting the process. So today begins far too early, not even a thread of poetry, but feelings of hope and a sense of dread.

Yes, I've voted. Yes, I live in one of those states that my sister mistrusts, for we vote by mail. "How do you know where your ballot goes," she asked. She works at a big city hospital where nursing staff will take turns covering each other so they can vote.

"It's all too complicated," my cousin said. "We should just get rid of the electoral college." She lives in a town of 26,000. She told me they have one polling station. Checks and balances.

Both of them will stand in line today, for as long as it takes. Only one of them is voting for the candidate I support. That's not the scandal. That remains with commentators who whip up our feelings with loud voices. Or maybe scandal remains with those funny voting machines that misrecord our votes (I actually experienced this long ago). I still hope to celebrate this day. Change is needed. Not scandal.

#134 Awesome Sunday Scribblings

This week Sunday Scribblings asks us to brag. Here's the prompt: "What's awesome about you? You can pick one awesome thing, or list as many as you can. Don't be shy."

I can’t find a poem in this week’s musing. I’m finding it far easier to write about anything but myself. I like that I am a survivor. Sometimes I call myself Chicken Little and startle at the slightest noise, and yet, I know that I am strong, feisty, sometimes impatient, sometimes creative, always hard working. I can function at once in the morning, without coffee. I’m not intimidated by libraries or computers. I need very little: a library card, my laptop, my passport, five changes of clothing in a suitcase, and my dear traveling companion. Family and friends are a given.

I love my love of nature. Here, for now, Mt. Hood floats above the Columbia River, weathering this afternoon’s pink clouds, while trees along the foothills change from green to glowing yellow. Underneath a mostly mild and quiet exterior, I submerge myself in writing, a massive three-year project, storytelling, re-seeing history through shifting points of view. A glance and I’m no longer here; I’m in a different century.

I feel larger than life. I speak my own mind. If I wanted to, I could dye my gray hair to mermaid colors or bake bread. I’m thankful I do not have to say, “Why is this happening to me?” Yet, I like to think I’m not remarkable or awesome. I worry about the world, yet I still have hope in the future. I still have dreams.

#132 What if I lived in medieval Sweden?

This week’s prompt from Sunday Scribblings asks us to imagine what if we had to live at a different time in history. I’ve always been drawn to medieval Sweden because my grandmother’s people can trace their family back to the 1600s, but I’ve never seen myself as a lady in a castle. Even if time travel were possible, the odds are against it, and I’d most likely find myself living in the lower classes. So despite today’s writing, I’m really happy to be in the 21st century, with my laptop and internet, sewing machine for quilting, and library cards for as many books as I could ever wish for.

Our castle is very cold, despite its fireplaces belching smoke. Even the immense and colorful tapestries of spring on the wall don’t help stop the cold air bristling down the corridors and hallways while furious winds swirl outside. I’m working in the kitchen. My backside is warm, but my hands are cold and so are my bare feet. I know I’ll have to carry the trays upstairs again, and the house thralls will be pinching me if I don’t go fast enough. I don’t like the dark spaces. Too many spiders.

Marta saw a rat the other day, sitting on top of a bag of oatmeal like he owned it, daring her to smack him. At least they let us sleep in the kitchen, Marta and me, beside the fireplace, when all the pots have been scoured with sand and the flagstones swept.

Yesternight strangers came, and our housecarls put on their padded armour and carried their battle-axes into dinner. I didn’t like stepping over their war gear and slipping on the bits of meat they’d thrown to the dogs. Better they’d thrown meat to me, though I’d snuck a bite or two as I carried heavy trays through the wide door and entered into the great room, where our jarl and his lady sat on a dias above a long trestle table. The men shouted at each other and drank deep from silver horns tied at their waists after pledging honor to our jarl.

I nearly dropped the tray more than once, as they jabbed their knives into the roast venison on my tray, tearing it away, the smell of their sweat mingling with the smell of sweet venison. Two strangers tried to grab me, but I got away. Marta was not so lucky; I’ll sleep alone tonight. I suppose I hate the cold most. I’ve heard it’s warmer south of Jutland.

#131 Forbidden

I wake with lines of poetry thrumming in my head, each off in different directions. What to write about this week that’s forbidden, the prompt from Sunday Scribblings. I thought of sex, but that’s too private to write about, the draw of what is forbidden adding to what we wish, to be loved, first kiss, first touching, first sex.

Then I remembered my stepfather’s steel-tipped boots. He worked in a steel mill, and was laid off. Beer drinking, a bear of a man, frustrated once too often by my Hollywood mother, he would explode into violence. His rage was forbidden. And me, I left that place, pretending I didn’t belong. Every day at school, I passed for one of them, the middle class, those so polite people who looked as if they never got dirty, who didn’t move to a different school every year, who didn’t wear second-hand clothes. How shocked I was to hear them swear, to finally learn that wife beating was as common there as anywhere else.

And so I lost myself in libraries, worked my way through school to be in that place where books were valued. I found that some people did create harmony and beauty, not so wild a dream, and I finally fell truly in love. Then my child was born, and all that I wanted for me, I wanted for her. The years passed. My daughter grew up a musician and today is everything I could not be, yet herself. Perhaps it was forbidden to dream this life I now lead, but I do not think so.

Knowledge.

From the first bite of the apple, even so
Eve knew more than we give her credit,
that line separating innocence from experience,
once crossed,
disappears. And yet, I want to know
when she first saw the apple,
was she curious
as she reached out and tasted?
Was it because of Snake hissing words
that promised godhood?

Sometimes we must say no
to ourselves first and to others.
Even the smallest steps take us to a different place,
out the gates and into the world.

Lillith knew this as well. She chose the blood
of babies and yet flies absolutely free,
seductive and dreaded in some evil fantasy.
The rest of us know that choice remains:
Do we honor Eve or Lillith?
Or is there something more?
We make our own reality as we go,
renouncing what is forbidden.

Read what others have written on this week's theme at Sunday Scribblings.

#129 Invitation . . .

A few leaves now turn
yellow and brown, fall begins
with invitation, the year is ending.
I walk along a line of scrub oaks,
their limbs above me
a dome of airiness I cannot understand,
a language I haven’t learned.
Their limbs reach up to touch the sky
as if all is connected, all hums with change,
beginnings and endings coil together,
I feel lighter as if
I could turn and curl into tomorrow,
at one with leaves scattering in the wind,
the smell of rain just out of reach.

Return to Sunday Scribblings for more writings on the theme of INVITATION . . .

Update on writing.

Not sure how to begin. Not sure how to continue. The first draft of Standing Stones is done (300 pages singlespaced), and now revision begins. I've done the first read through, have lots of notes, and have written a synopsis of the five sections that make up this story. Maybe three people will be test readers for me. Maybe. This feels like such an unknown. I only know that parts made me laugh and parts made me cry, so I will persevere.

Otherwise, the internet is an absolutely terrific resource: photos, maps, odd bits of historical info, and, of course, being able to research the library before I go. We already have library cards to the rather small library here in Vancouver and have crossed the river where the downtown Portland Library has granted us cards as well (a reciprocal arrangement with Clark County). I'm thinking of starting my bibliography online in case others are interested in 19th Century Scotland.

The internet does have its dark side, even for me. I've now found out about three deaths of people once very close to me via the internet, not the least being my sister, this week.

History Lesson

I am two years old when the bomb is dropped
on Hiroshima, three days later on Nagasaki.
105,000 Japanese civilians die.
Buildings pop and flame
like white flowers splintered in a hot wind.
People flee to a nearby canal.
Coats catch fire as they run.
They cannot see
for the rain of ash.
Someone’s watch is stepped on,
forever frozen in my memory.

After the war, faces without lips
Turn to the camera
so we can see
what has been wrought.

In my dreams I watch again the jagged film:
two men smile for the camera,
sitting in the cockpit of a silver plane,
and the bomb falls down through clouds
to become a ball of fire.

It is August 1949.
The Russians test their first atomic bomb.
I am in first grade. We bow our heads and
put our hands behind our necks to protect them.
I do not believe that rolling into a gutter
will save me from the billowing mushroom cloud.

I am seventeen. Two marines visit
my high school English class.
They point to a map taped on the blackboard.
They say you do not know what is coming,
Vietnam, 1961.

Today, September 11, 2008,I remember two planes
crashing into twin towers, and a third plane
head first in a Pennsylvania field.

So many deaths. So many memorials.
So many wars I do not understand.


This poem came from this last week of thinking about September 11, world terrorism. I was off line this last week making a move to Vancouver in Washington, and now am living in this lovely apartment overlooking a small garden, just off Highway 205 and the bridge over the Columbia River with Mt. Hood floating in a brilliant blue sky.

#128 Last Night

Last night I learned my sister died
somewhere in Dallas, June, 2001.
They say she was living in a crack house.
A County Coroner’s report online
listed no kin to claim her body.
I sip my coffee and wonder
exactly how long a good life lasts.

Did it end when she was fifteen
glowing in yellow chiffon?
Ah, I was jealous, a year older, tall
and invisible in my borrowed prom dress.

Maybe it ended when
she left home at sixteen,
got married, got divorced,
two babies later somehow got to Hollywood,
worked as a walk-on, LA sparkly,
visited the Tate mansion one week before
Charlie Manson did, drove to San Francisco
with her new boyfriend and his green convertible.
I worked at a bank, but I’d never seen
so much money. Then the telephone calls came.
Can you take the kids?
Just for a while? And I did
until she came screaming back:
I’m their mother, not you.
She was living on a commune with a rock star,
and so it went. Did I say she was beautiful?

The last time I saw her, she was standing
on a corner mid-Wilshire Los Angeles,
screaming at me, her face twisted up
with I don’t know what needs.
I only know that
I no longer had time for my sister,
not even for a cup of coffee.

Moirae

Once we three – maiden, mother, crone –
danced around Athena's gift, olive trees
all along the Mediterranean. Our eyes glowing,
arms linked each to each,
our feet traced patterns in the dust;
the world followed.

Mothers prayed to us in their ninth month;
they pinched offerings from loaves of baking bread,
always a tenth consigned to fire,
and at death,
they offered up their souls.

Now we body surf through storms at sea,
stirring cold and warm currents in every direction,
weaving the fates of the world with our songs.
At night, chaos. Our beards become white caps.
By day, those who see us cry: Mermaid, mermaid.


Somehow Botticelli's painting came to mind of the three graces or fates. Moirae is another name for these three goddesses, much celebrated in mythology, poetry, and paintings. See Botticelli's Primavera.

#126 Somewhere . . .

So I’ll go no more a-roving, across the summer lake . . .
--Lord Byron

I have slept in so many hotel rooms, I’ve lost count.
The best were in Turkey, no central heat,
the windows frosted in winter,
Victorian charm and many blankets fighting
with the cold, the white armoir delicately
painted with blue flowers, the street below narrow,
perfect for walking to market.

I remember those breakfasts,
every morning the same: impossibly
fresh little loaves of French bread,
with butter in a round white cup and marmalade,
two steaming boiled eggs,
two slabs of a pungent white cheese,
shrunken rank little olives served Greek style,
and cup after cup of a hot dark tea.

Days Inn suffers in contrast,
two chairs next to a round table,
no light for reading, a refrigerator that hums
through the night, voices echoing down the halls.
In the morning, watery orange juice,
anonymous oat flakes, and iced milk.
The sign proclaims continental style,
but I remember those olives.

Outside this window, I see a row of maples,
their leaves edged with the first
red blush of winter, and I am far from home.


Check out Sunday Scribblings for more reflections on this week's prompt: somewhere.

Monday morning.

Today begins the new week. This week we're back on the road, in the midst of moving to Vancouver, Washington, and I'll be taking down one of the most beautiful offices I've ever worked in. Each morning about 6 am, I sit here, sometimes with a cup of ginger tea, and look out over a forest of scrub brush pines, the sun sometimes coloring a few clouds pink. Within an hour, the color is done, the sky a flat blue, but I don't notice. I'm writing. The $20 printer I got from a garage sale two months ago works just fine. My bright blue plastic packing crates turned on their sides function beautifully as a temporary bookcase. And I have my desk. One of those really big fold up office tables. Ah, spread out and work!

I don't know exactly where my next office will be. We haven't seen the apartment yet. Most likely I'll have a nook somewhere. This ambiguity of space comes at a time when I'm really finished with the first draft. I should be celebrating, but I know what is ahead. The same ambiguity of space, only internal. The story is on paper. I love these characters, but have I done them justice? Do I speak for them their innermost thoughts and hopes? Have I captured their experiences in a time not my own? Will I have the tenacity and vision to edit? and for how long?

I'd rather the story was rolling forward, but everything I've read and heard suggests this part, this revision part, is as important as any drafting that goes before. So, I'll begin. With a new office and a different kind of progress. Meanwhile, writing each week for Sunday Scribblings gives me a kind of writing community that leavens out this other work. And when do I start sending the book out? I only know not yet.

#125 Sunday Scribblings

"Love Story: You said, I said"

You opened the door to my knock,
your smile so wide, I could see all your teeth.
Later, you told me you peeked through the door
and saw trouble coming.
I was trouble.

You said I’m not the marrying kind,
so don’t get ideas. I didn’t.

You said, “Watch A Thousand Clowns with me.”
I curled up next to you
and never went home.

Your best friend said, “You might as well marry her.
You don’t talk about anything else.”
You said, “There are certain tax advantages
to getting married.” I said no.
You said, “I’m moving out.”
I said yes.

You hummed Beethoven’s Ode to Joy off-key
when our newborn daughter was put in your arms.
I thought it was a miracle:
Your singing, her birth,
everywhere we’ve lived, a miracle.
Three and a half decades later,
your snoring next to me, solace.


This week, the Sunday Scribblings prompt: "How did you meet your significant other, your best friend, your dog, your nemesis? On the flip side of that, are there any people in your life you have lost touch with who you wonder about? Jump to Sunday Scribblings to read more . . .

#123 Sunday Scribblings

Observations. I only have this. When the writing goes well, all else goes well. Each day of writing brings struggle, but when my characters all move, when the tiniest detail brings a scene to life, when I cry or laugh along with my characters, when I know with the deepest part of me that this story has value, then all else goes well.

And yet, how I shiver with the slightest criticism. I wonder if all writers suffer this way with doubt and indecision. On those days, I'm lucky to get over 100 words done, my characters seem like cardboard, and I wonder again and again where the story is going. Yes, I have a synopsis (not updated yet). Yes, I have back stories. Yes, I know this story as if it happened to me, even though it's set in mid-19th Century.

On those bad days, I settle within and try to listen for the threads of the story. Time runs out. I study writing techniques and try to apply them. I read research, and for the highlight of the day, take a walk with my husband. And all is well. The sun comes up in the morning, and suddenly, the story flickers to life, and I'm off again.

But even the lightest criticism nearly stops me every time. I'm just about ready to start posting some parts of my draft online for feedback, and I wish I didn't dread it. And yet, I want to look into the mirror. I want to know.

Laptop skills . . . or so they say

I'm getting ready to write this morning, the sun is shining, my computer is finally warmed up and working fine after 2 hours last night of fretting over online connections and failed passwords and holding the cell phone far too close to the laptop while talking to Comcast.

But all is well. I fixed it!!!! Myself!!!! With a system restore in the safe mode. I hardly know what that means but I had to do something after I'd been told it was my laptop and not the internet connection. I'm sure the internet gods had something to do with it as well as the nice people from Comcast. Now to tackle the infinitely different challenge of writing a scene without dialogue, a task laid down by the writing gurus at NOVEL-L. How can any writer work in a safe mode?

Where did you find your gifts?

This week I found a lovely dark star material for the back of my mermaid quilt and serendipitiously found a panel of Laurel Burch fabric on a remnant table. Laurel Burch has long been a favorite designer of mine for her gorgeously vivid colors and imaginative designs. Imagine my delight when I found her mermaid patterns all across the country in quilting and fabric stores two years ago. Today, few fabrics stores carry her line, giving conflicting stories about when they will carry her fabrics again. I went online to find her site and learned of her death, far too young of an osteoporosis-related illness.

Burch painted her vivid designs first; others translated them to fabric. Her book, Legends: 9 Quilts Inspired by the Earth, Sea and Sky, is filled with her imaginative paintings and patterns, each challenging the artist within the reader. If I could, I would ask her:

Where did you find your gifts?
When were you drawn to the sea,
the swirling sea filled with
mermaids, sea horses and
those giant fishes,
orange and red and blue?

When did they come to you,
in some mysterious watery night
filled by the light of a floating purple moon?
Or did you look within to find
a cosmic earth mother,
a goddess muse who led you to paint
every flower, bird, fish and creature of the sea
in those healing colors
that shout affirmation,
celebration, and love?

I only know as I trace each line,
your gifts humble me.
Your mermaids gaze from my quilt
a testament to art,
and when I sleep,
I dream of your purple moon.



Image from Laurel Burch's site at: http://www.laurelburch.com/

If I had to . . .

If I had to,
I could put my hand
through melted glass
like Alice, and go where
roses grow white
and are painted red
as the Queen shrieks
in the garden. Fearful of
my own head, I would
paint as fast as any
artist could
until the Queen is silent.

f I had to, I could
forget about who is
in the White House, just who
invoked presidential powers
to send in anonymous thousands,
so many to die.

Like an escape artist, I read
the paper fitfully,
hoping not to see
those numbers,
over 4,000 dead,
over five years of war.

If I had to, I could
walk countless miles,
forego imported bananas,
wear another sweater in winter,
turn the lights off
one by one,
think about polar bears
on melting ice floes.
I could stop
driving my car, if I had to.

A Sunday Scribbling prompt: If I had to . . .

Willamette Writers Conference

I'm here. It's better than anything I hoped for. Writers everywhere. And agents. And excellent workshops. The only drawback: I left my power cord to the laptop back home, so no more updates until Monday, at least.