Spangled Seasons (for One Shot Wednesday)
Under hazed New York
spheres, spring sousing Riverside, earlier
cocooned in the Moor shedding off
mover’s trip, bundled molehills against
walls –once sparks we strung
onto a nebulae over
nights on Federal Hill—you and
I trudge on.
Trails we looped
between Chesapeake,
Susquehanna and
the Hudson, Venus sputtering
on Pennsylvania woods these,
too, we tucked abreast in
memory, if Manhattan
spares us.
Our cherry
noon-s have leaped into infinity
from finiteness; as well warbled
peace from cypress groves at
Inner Harbor, dandelions mirroring
our masquerade, a yucca spurting
by the window squirrels flying
a trapeze on pines mocked,
ends of days orioles
griped about—we plucked to
spangle our seasons. Soon mere
revenant: Baltimore winters we
skidded, wincing but
un-bruised. I posed for you
that summer cicadas plunged
into passion deaths, smearing
wind shields Fells Point’s
mists we eluded fogged.
Tall suns now spear
mornings at the Moor, we flex
our years on West Broadway: summers
on a mountain lake maybe, a bowery at
Brooklyn Gardens in the fall, sunset
behind Grant’s tomb perhaps, or by
Shakespeare’s lagoon, divining
on its surface the play
of wind on our
dreams
I posted here the first two stanzas of this memoir in verse on Nov. 3 to announce its first publication on Poetry Super Highway, Poet of the Week, Nov. 1-7, 2010. It’s been recently posted on Jendi Reiter’s Reiter’s Block, Great Poems Online, Jan. 19, 2011.
Posted for One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry, where poets and artists who love their art share their work and sustain each other. Join us! Click OSP on my blogroll and find out how.
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About
autumn wind
wondering about lilies
in a mountain pond
Tell me a writer who really gets a satisfying jornal, in Spanish a daily wage or its equivalent, and I’ll bare a spirit in constant bouts of doubtfulness. Does a writer earn more because of what he writes and how he does it? Or is a writer paid more or less because of who he is? Is it money or honor he expects to receive?
Ahhh … but money as wage, and praise or honor as reward would be too predictable, too common as Job lamented in the Book of Job. It is in these lines that read: “Is not man’s life on earth nothing more than pressed service, his times no better than hired drudgery? Like the slave, sighing for the shade, or the workman with no thought but his wages, months of delusion I have assigned to me, nothing for my own but nights of grief. Lying in bed I wonder, ‘When will it be day?’ Risen I think, ‘How slowly evening comes!’
Restlessly I fret till twilight falls. Swifter than a weaver’s shuttle my days have passed, and vanished, leaving no hope behind. Remember that my life is but a breath, and that my eyes will never again see joy.”
Not money but joy is the ultimate wage as the passage implies. And joy is not hard to earn for it is in everyday life if we have eyes to see, a nose to smell, fingers to touch, ears to hear–a heart beating. This to me, is how a writer earns a daily wage. His wages then take the guise of treasures his heart can transfigure into a universe of thought that taps into other hearts, that causes a swirl in the depth of other souls, or that makes wings to sprout on leaden heels.
Sometimes not joy but rueful, poignant moments are my pick. Take what I earned once: On my walk home in my neighborhood, I caught two clumps of snowdrops–such tiny blossoms smaller than fingertips that do not look up but shyly droop close to black patches on the ground winter has frozen. That afternoon in the frosty wind, they trembled as if ready to turn away and run but how could they? For that poignant moment on seeing the wintry rain beat on the fragile snowdrop–as if pushing it to go home now, go to sleep–I earned my jornal, my daily wage.
Once on summer walk, the crackle of dried leaves just hit me both like the laughter of children and sobs long suppressed. Neither one of them would resolve the dryness, but I recalled how each does bring tears: laughter for joy, sobs for healing that comes with the release of a dammed-up pain. My jornal that day came as two haiku.
Fall has since shortened the day and the heart begins to crave for lost space that it doesn’t even recall which or where. I feel that most treasures have turned into mush so much so I wouldn’t be able to sift them off the ground. Yet I caught the dying day yesterday–so glorious in the gold of autumn it opened a flip side of serene heaven. Blades of grass coated in diadems of rain that carpet the lawns render royal walks poor by imitation. A burst of red maple against an inky blue sky humbled me, a soul bragging about her skill to recreate beauty in words.
I suppose I’m taking Job’s reflections to heart. I’d rather not gloss over each day and look beyond what’s there, right before me, or else fragile as is my breath one day “my eyes may never again see joy” to write. With what then will I compare the eternal joy, the ultimate wage I await?
Yet for now, as other eyes hanker to make the invisible visible, I put a tag on some moments of joy. Like on seeing the snowdrops, I paid myself $200 as my jornal.
What could have been yours?
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you traveled some very familiar roads for me in this piece…i enjoyed it tremendously…thank you for a great one shot…
Glad you enjoyed it, Brian! I loved those roads especially travelling through them at dawn and dusk.
I’ve only been to New York once, till now. Loved the way you used place names, colors, scenes, to build a whole world in this one. The last line is sheer music. Wonderful piece.
As always, heart-lifting words from you, Joy! Thanks as a word is not enough. Were I that close to give hug you…
This is fascinating, so full of places that seem familiar and yet are cast in a dream-like way– a collision of present and past– beautiful! xxJenne’
…’dream-like’, I love how you put it! Thanks, Jen!
oh this reads wonderful – loved it from first to last line…and hope i’m gonna make it to new york one day..
Glad you love it, Claudia! Yes, make it to NY someday. It will totally sweep you away!
Charming, bustling travelogue.
Thanks, Steve! A travelogue, indeed. First time I see it that way…driving back and forth from Baltimore to Manhattan was life then.
Its wonderfully written and your words … like…
‘wind shields Fells Point’s
mists we eluded fogged.
Tall suns now spear
mornings at the Moor, we flex’
so vividly painted the image… thanks for sharing…
ॐ नमः शिवाय
Om Namah Shivaya
http://shadowdancingwithmind.blogspot.com/2011/02/whispers-another-kind-of-valentines-day.html
Thank you, Shashi, for your generous words!