stargazers in furious
bloom – vanilla air –
are the only flowers
that trust me, tell me
i am not hopeless;
the juice in their veins, the way
they gulp the sun and meet my face,
their beauty and their business
say i don’t need a green thumb
and the riotous garden.
all one needs is a singular love.
Birdless sky swells grey blue against
trees that stand like brushes
stiff in the cold
The penultimate breath
of a new earth
The dark disappears in a steadfast
philanthropy of color: red, orange, rose
blush up from the land over lakes and hills
and roof slats to tell the inhabitants
Night has not prevailed.
Earth e x h a l e s
as the Sun spills her promise.
If I could I would gather all the words from the wild, pick them like berries and press them into these pages to bleed them, beautiful, into my notebook I would chase syllable streams that refresh dry banks and stop. at the quarry where I will cut confused hands on stone, going through the ruins of my dreams and I will bottle my cries to pour over the altar of my art If I could I would answer the laughter in the wind, unravel the rhetoric of the rain, and walking dirt and gravel transcribe the vernacular of city streets I would record every note of joy from children and undo the silence of grandmothers, ask them about dogged hope I would keep on west of my despair, right through the dying sun and spell the sunrise as he lights land and sea in the genius of resurrection.
It took me over a quarter of a century to realize beauty is not something frivolous. We need beauty in our life. The truth still takes my breath away. With no particular aesthetic gift or impulse, I was for much of my life satisfied if my purchases were functional. They didn’t have to be pretty. And so neither did I, because my brain got me around. It was my mind, not my appearance, that helped me achieve in school and life and build relationships. I now look with patience upon the black-and-white assertions we draw in youth.
In Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert borrows from The Italians by Luigi Barzini to tease out “why the Italians have produced the greatest artistic, political and scientific minds of the ages, but have still never become a major world power. [His answers] have to do with a sad Italian history of corruption…and dominators…which has generally led Italians to draw the seemingly accurate conclusion that nobody and nothing in this world can be trusted. Because the world is so corrupted…one should trust only what one can experience with one’s own senses. This is why Italians will tolerate hideously incompetent generals, presidents, tyrants, professors, bureaucrats, journalists and captains of industry, but will never tolerate incompetent opera singers, conductors, ballerinas…actors, cooks, tailors…In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. Only artistic excellence is incorruptible. And sometimes the meal is the only currency that is real. To devote yourself to the creation and enjoyment of beauty, then, can be a serious business – not always necessarily a means of escaping reality, but sometimes a means of holding on to the real when everything else is flaking away into rhetoric and plot.”
Gilbert goes on to describe how deep in the ruins of her marriage, she began to mend her soul by reading aloud Italian words out of a dictionary. I can relate. After my body broke down from stress and overwork in my 20s, I noticed the flowers for the first time. I had never seen them grace the cities I lived in. Too busy with things that mattered like studies and work, I had never looked. But in my frailty, I was ravished by their beauty, the force of their color. My spirit had fractured open, worn and thirsty for something beyond the dictates of duty. Eager for a song, not just the beat of the clock I raced. I didn’t understand why I took so hungrily to the flowers I had by practice dismissed. It took me years to realize that beauty is healing. And so the lyrical, sexy Italian sounds out of her mouth brought Gilbert healing joy. She says “the appreciation of pleasure can be an anchor of one’s humanity…You were given life; it is your duty…to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight.”
I would take it a step further. Beauty is the very fabric of our world. Yes, we’ve screwed things up with crime, war, destruction, and the abuse of our natural resources. But beauty dances in the pageantry of the sunset and of the cosmos (who said Jupiter had to be so beautiful??), in the languages of men. Some days the California sky is so magnificent, the clouds coiffed with a panache which in a painting would look overdone, too perfect. Beauty wasn’t an artful afterthought to this world. She obligated herself upon us. Beauty isn’t something to find. She is the substance of this earth and wants to show her imprint in our life.
How does this belated dawning translate in my life? While I remain impressed with women who match head to toe, my regard for them is largely what I hold for curious lab specimens. I was taken by my mother-in-law’s response when I thanked her for a recent gift card saying I’ll get something to look pretty in for her son. “Get something nice to be pretty for yourself. Life is short. Someday, you will realize that you don’t have much time left over to enjoy what you have now.” I was reminded that while vanity is one thing, self-respect is another and taking care with my appearance is good for the soul. The series on beauty that’s around the corner will take us through the body, spirit, femininity, relationships, love, memory, pain, suffering, art. Please welcome the guests who have worked hard over their stories and are still bleeding from the edits – because beauty is worth it.
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this epicurean sea of wildflowers and opus
white blossoms stirs beneath a rising day
she spills seminal secrets as the bees and
winds drive pollen grains and promise past
the velvet parting into stigma and style
with the marksmanship of knowing.
this field, voluminous womb, awash with prose
drinks the sun that climaxes overhead. a rain
of white sapphire upon silken spires that
indemnifies last night’s shower,
and the dandelion memories too much
for me in the wind perish in a panoply of filaments
but here i lie on my earthen bed pregnant
with poetry, the story under stories of the grass,
translating the anatomy of nature’s mystery and
indulge myself upon this, my field of words.
What is it about the year-end? Makes us face our fears and disappointments, and count our hopes again like pieces of treasure in our palm? The seasons herald change as they fall into one another but the calendar shows us we don’t cycle in place. We wheel forward. Birthdays, anniversaries, “three years since” are private touchstones across memory and longing and the new year, a giant communal marker of time, leaves no one unaffected. The Eve is a live wire between the past and future and with the turn of the year, we cross a mental threshold.
For some of us it’s simple math, only so many grains of sand left in the hourglass. We seek to balance the equation, weigh our dreams against the run of time. But it’s more than a race with the clock. No matter our age or station or story, the height of the new year holds out a second chance. We hope for better, of our life and of our self, because to be human is to grow. In character, strength, achievement there is room for more and we seize fresh opportunity. So we turn our feet toward our dreams, reset our compass to the hope of this winter sun.
Prague Astronomical Clock
under a scant sun
winter throws his brume
of snow. fields lie vanquished
in lambent splendor and robed
in frost, trees stand in mute glory
under his imperial breath
creation covets the hearth
her haven, barren slumber:
a bold consummation of autumn’s bounty
the earth waits, a sleeping beauty
’til spring breaks upon the white
spell and redeems her joy.
Photo Credit http://www.gardenwalkgardentalk.com
