Right Now

The mountains are gone this morning, closeted by gray clouds. Everywhere is wet from last night's rain and the start of more today. Night winds blew the tablecloth on the balcony into the arms of a chair as if purposely placed there. I've kept it on late this year with its golden background and whispy gray-green olive leaves in collaboration with the warm, sunny weather of these last three months, autumn stretched into December. 

The vines are bare, pared back after the recent harvest. Pruned olive branches are piled in the groves of our neighbors. Wind blows bits of fog from the hills' crevices and smoke, like a thicker, deliberately-placed fog, dots the fields as discarded branches burn despite the misty rain. The scent is of earth and rain. 

Sun, behind cloud layers, looks more like moon. Andrea Bocelli, on my playlist, fills the room with his glorious voice. As sky lightens and ground fog creeps back, the mountains are suspended in air, blue ghost mountains. There is only this moment of full presence, of clarity and connection.


For Marian's Open Link Monday at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads who talked about the importance of our attention as poets and writing what we experience and who asked us to write about what's going on in our little corner of the world.

Boston, Princesses, and Brave Heroines

“I believe that one can never leave home. I believe that one carries the shadows, the dreams, the fears and the dragons of home under one's skin, at the extreme corners of one's eyes and possibly in the gristle of the earlobe.”

                                                               (Maya Angelou- from her book: Letter to My Daughter)


My home coordinates lie in Boston.
History and the sea set the backdrop
that grew me up.
The sea fed me
as father brought home fresh catch from Boston's docks since fish was cheaper than meat
and lobster was called poor man's food back then. Fed me in other ways, too,
having more to do
with things mulled, decided, wanted
while watching its rhythms. A gentle teacher, a harsh
teacher, a strict teacher in immutable laws learned
through osmosis and frequent contact. History was repeated
each grade, at home, museums and trails toured
often, father and teachers as tour guides. Birthplace
of the Nation, central to all that came to be. Growing
up poor in Boston set one scenario absorbed early and uncensored at subliminal levels.
Moving later to an affluent area set another and stood in contrast
even to my child mind. The wrench of a ten year old moving from scores
of playmates in a housing project, the freedom of unlimited places to go, people to watch,
things to do. Suburbs look nicer but restrict playmates and places, set up
different expectations. On me. Quit being a scrapper, be a lady. Ladylike prescribed
by the catholic school I went to and the unmarried aunts with whom I lived. A starker
contrast to the Boston housing project is hard to imagine. I never judged the projects harsh,
simply my world. I felt at home. A world rich in colorful folks who knew
how to take care of themselves
and business. Fought for what they thought was right. Or to protect. Fought a lot. Taught
me to fight. I'm not talking figuratively here but physically. Real fights, vanquishing evil fights.
Or so it seemed. I had no time for fairy tale princesses in those days, before Brave,
even with red hair, freckles and Scottish ancestry. But Merida would have been my heroine,
my kind of gal - a wild, witches consulting, shooting arrows at enemies, all in, redefining,
no limits just because we're girls,
fully alive on her own terms kind of gal.





This is in response to Mary over at dVerse Poets who asked us to write about with a Disney theme way back on Saturday but which I missed. So I'm doing it for open link Tuesday since it really got me thinking.

Where I Live

I'm from the town at the top of the hill
in a far away province of Italy,
a medieval town with ancient stones lining the streets
holding the traces of footsteps for a thousand years
reminding me of my place in the scheme of things-
one of them, humans together, trying to walk straight on crooked paths;
small alleys off the main street echo summers of shouts, out the windows,
down the lanes, while cooking smells waft overhead and people gather on stoops,
stairs, squares always urgent with the need to connect.

I'm from where Dolorata calls from her stand on market day: "Bella! Come stai?",
where Gianni parks his van with fresh fish every Wednesday and Friday and kisses
me and my husband on both cheeks and marvels that our names are John and Mary
and he's Gianni and his wife is Maria and we're from different countries
and aren't we lucky to have met and live here now? I'm from where I can see
the Apennine mountains around three sides of town while the Adriatic hugs the fourth,
where traditions are handed down like cherished family recipes, all meant to nourish,
where transitory has to do with crops and existential struggle describes weather
as friend or foe of the agriculture that sustains our region, its olives and grapes,
dirt and rain, trees and vines cut back after last season to grow again in this one
and be reaped to feed us all and slake our thirst.

I'm from where art and architecture generations old are held as humanity's treasures,
where people greet children with smiles and hugs and swing them gaily around,
hold them, too, as humanity's treasures; where yearly festas celebrate every saint,
crop, flower or historical accomplishment of our region to encode children's memories
in celebration. I've thrown in my lot with these folks in this town to live, to learn,
to expand my definition of where I'm from.

This is in response to Pamela Sayers request at dVerse Poets Pub to write about the places we live.

that was the year

that was the year when my brother got arrested and all of us were stunned in that kind of what? in the world? it's impossible! kind of stunned that stopped me fast yanked me down and took my breath away and made me whisper to my girlfriend that the only way that the word brother goes with the word jail is if he was visiting one to volunteer. shows how much I knew that year. the year that my daughter went away to college and all I could do was cry not sweet motherly tears but heaving sobs with my nose running and my eyes swollen red that embarrassed everyone around including me but I couldn't stop and carried on like that just like that for weeks even when I went to a couple's weekend with my husband to talk and I couldn't because all I could do was wail at the loss of my daughter. that year my mother died when there should never be a year when a mother dies six weeks after being diagnosed with something that had treatment protocols described by the doctor for me to tell her about so she could decide which one to choose and instead she died and I just wasn't ready to not have her in my life in my daughter's life and to figure out what to do with the hole in my heart which they had no treatment protocols for or even told me about so I could prepare for until there it was and it felt like it was the whole of me this hole where I used to have a whole heart and I stood there without my mother who always took care of things like that like family heart holes and I had to figure out what to do myself alone that year. that year I got fired from my profession can I get fired from my profession? which they think is just a job and I had never been fired before and where do they get those ridiculous euphemisms like downsizing and rightsizing when it's down alright I mean I was down but it's not right no matter what size they say it is without me and it wasn't a job it was my professed profession since I was three and I was so immobilized really unable to move that I had to go to a healer to get healed because I couldn't just couldn't move and I had a hole in my heart and it wasn't the kind of healing you have to chat about at a coffee klatch it was the kind that fills heart holes gets limbs moving and saves your life. that year that was the year.


This was posted in response to the prompt: Stream-of-Consciousness Writing by Victoria Slotto in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft over at the dVerse Poets Pub.

Brave Endeavors

My friend, Ruth, over at Synch-ro-ni-zing wrote a thought provoking post about living in the face of death, despair and fear. In her wise way she turned to poetry, bits of poems, she called a "found poem" to provide an important juxtaposition.
After reading it, the following quotes that I've collected because they spoke to me came together in a whole new way. They illuminate our work as writers and offer encouragement for this brave endeavor.



I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you might nudge the world a little or make a poem that children will speak for you when you are dead. 
- Tom Stoppard


It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.
~Frederick Douglass

So don't be frightened, dear friend, if a sadness confronts you larger than any you have ever known, casting its shadow over all you do. You must think that something is happening within you, and remember that life has not forgotten you; it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall. Why would you want to exclude from your life any uneasiness, any pain, any depression, since you don't know what work they are accomplishing within you? 

-Rilke

One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these-to be fierce and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity.
-Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I Had A Dream

For Kelly

I had a dream when my daughter turned twenty: she began to eat the tall plant in our living room. I knew she wouldn't stop. She turned green like the plant, her lips, her face, her neck. I feared the plant would take her over, evolve her into a new life form. The she/plant grew wildly out of control, spread to the carpet, filled the room, then the house. I panicked, declared: "There'll be no more plant eating in this house!" As if I could stop it, or her, or needed to.

Prophecies come in dreams. She moved to Trinidad's Rain Forest, staked her claim to earth, connected to the plants in this far away land,  discovered the ancient world view and speaks it anew: "All my relations." She gives back in balance as she takes, knows her power, walks in beauty in a sacred way and brings her medicine to mother earth. Earth needs her medicine.