worshipping Gaia before the great altar Santo Domingo
if the goddess is not carried in your heart like a warm loaf in a shopping bag you will never discover her hiding place
she does not sip ambrosia from these golden flowers nor does she mount this vine to her heavenly throne nor does she sit on this ceiling frowning down
in spite of the sunshine trapped in all this gold the church is cold and overwhelming tourists come with cameras not the faithful with their prayers
my only warmth and comfort not in this god who bids the lily gilded but in that quieter voice which speaks within me
and brings me light amidst all this darkness and brings me poverty amidst all this wealth
Comment: I was surprised to find this article on my poem Gaia while doing an online search for something else last night. It is an interesting interpretation of the poem. I would like to thank the writers and editors who put it together for their careful work and attention to detail. Sun and Moon is available on Amazon.
Outside the church, a boy pierces his lips with a cactus thorn.
The witch doctor catches the warm blood in a shining bowl.
He blesses the girl who kneels before him.
On her head she carries a basket filled with flowers and heavy stones. He sprinkles it with her brother’s blood.
All day she will walk with this basket on her head until evening’s shadows finally weigh her down.
Cobbles clatter beneath her clogs.
When the stones grow tongues, will they speak the languages in which she dreams?
Comment: Revisiting and revising some earlier poems. The early version can be found here. The original poem comes from the collection Obsidian’s Edge, which can be found on Amazon.
Here, in Island View, my lawn’s parched grass longs for water, long-promised but never drawing near. Do my flowers remember when the earth slept without form and darkness lay upon the face of the deep?
The waters under heaven gathered into one place. When they separated, the firmament appeared. Light sprang apart from darkness and with the beginning of light came the word, more words, and then the world …
… my own world of water in which my mother carried me until her waters broke and the life sustaining substance drained away throwing me from dark to light.
In Oaxaca, water was born free, yet everywhere lies imprisoned in bottles, in jars, in frozen cubes, its captive essence staring out with grief-filled eyes.
A young boy on a tricycle pedals the streets with a dozen prison cells, each with forty captives: forty fresh clean litres of drinkable water. He holds out his hand for money and invites the villagers to pay a ransom, to set these prisoners free.
Real water yearns to be released, to be spontaneous, to trickle out of the corner of your mouth, to drip from your chin, and fall to the ground.
It is a mirage of palm trees upon burning sand. It is the hot sun dragging its blood red tongue across the sky and panting for water like a great big thirsty dog.
There is no science to sciatica, just a series of sensations most of them involving pain.
I don’t know how or when it comes, but one day, it knocks on your door and you clutch back and buttock.
It’s like a hawk at the bird feeder, flown in from nowhere to shriek and shred, unawares, one small bird.
Was it the flannel I dropped yesterday when showering? I stooped to pick it up, lunged forward, and that was it?
The pain came later. It kept me awake all night, my worst nightmare. No comfort anywhere. An endless
wriggling and every movement a knife blade stabbing at my buttock and slicing its slow, painful way down my leg.
The screws, my grandfather called it, a metal screw screwed into his leg, leaving him limp and limping.
I googled it today, sciatica, and they suggested an ice pad for twenty minutes, repeated twenty minutes later.
“Yes,” I muttered, “yes” and found in the fridge the ice pack we used to use in our Coleman’s cooler.
My beloved helped me undo my pants. “This,” she said, “will be icing on the cake.” “No,” I said, “it will be icing on the ache”
Tomorrow, I will call the chiropractor. She will bend me to her will, straighten my back, cure the pain, set me right again, as long as Covid lets me in to her domain.
Time changed with the clocks and my body clock is no longer in sync with the tick-tock chime that denounces each hour.
Hours that used to wound now threaten to kill. They used to limp along, but now they just rush by and I, who used to run from point to point, now shuffle a step at a time.
Around us, the Covidis thrives and flowers. Wallflowers, violets, we shrink into our homes, board up the windows, refuse to open doors. We communicate by phone, e-mail, messenger, Skype.
Give us enough rope and we’ll survive a little while, fearful, full of anguish, yet also filled with hope.
Between Two Places Dianne Fitzpatrick Where’s Home?
Where’s Home (3) Part III of an open letter to Jan Hull
The Little Things
In 1898, Spain fought and lost a war with America over possession of Cuba. Cuba was the last of Spain’s overseas Empire and when it went, the all conquering fatherland, upon whose empire the sun never set, was reduced to its original territory in the Spanish Peninsula. That same year, the literary Generation of 1898 started a new movement, one that made Spain itself central to its imagery and thought. Theirs was not the Spain of Imperial History, with its wars and treaties, battles and conquests. Theirs was the eternal countryside of Spain, the Spain of Old Castille that was rooted to the soil, and that had remained virtually unchanged in the small towns, fishing ports, and villages, for hundreds of years. This was the Spain of Miguel de Unamuno’s Intra-historia: the history of small things.
St. David, Dewi Sant, the patron saint of Wales, a historical figure flourishing circa 600 CE, is famous within Wales for his many sayings. But for me, one stands out. “Byddwch lawen a chadwch eich ffyd a’ch credd, a gwnewch y petheu bychainmewn bwywd” / Be joyful and keep your faith and creed and do the little things in life. In these times of stress and strain, faced by enormous changes brought about by the pandemic, to these prophetic words I turn.
Poets, creators, artists, stoneists, craft-workers of all kinds … we are the antennae of the people. We sense the directions in which life flows and will flow and we are ahead of our times, not behind them. We are the ones who ‘do the little things’, often abandoning larger, more financially rewarding projects in favor of smaller ones that spiritually enrich both us and the people around us. And that is what I am now reading in Jan Hull’s Where’s Home? People, real, live, flesh-and-blood people, many of them artists at heart, abandoning the big city’s rush and rock and roll to enjoy the quietude of small communities which they help to build with their own hands.
Troglodytes, cavemen, people living in the past, I have heard ‘so-called saner citizens’ mutter about some of our contemporary artists. They live off hand-outs and charity and welfare, and they live in the past. Grey-suited, working in concrete boxes, these well-heeled critics are all made out of ticky-tacky, as the old song says, and they work in little boxes, and they come out all the same. Fine fr some, but you certainly cannot say that of the characters who inhabit the small towns, villages, and ports, as Where’s Home? demonstrates so clearly, with quote after quote from contented people, all resident in Nova Scotia, some CFA (Come From Away), others CBC (Come By Choice), and yet others native to the province.
Living in the past … when Hurricane Arthur struck, we went without power for twelve days. No water, no warm food, no cooking, no refrigeration, no flush toilets, no showers, no air conditioning, no television, no Wifi, no internet … In 1928, my grandfather and my father built a summer home, a bungalow, in Gower. I remember, even in the late fifties, living there during the summer with my grandparents: wood stove, rain water barrels, no running water, outhouse, no electricity, no refrigeration, oil lamps … Hurricane Arthur … and Clare and I went back to bungalow living. Several of our neighbors did not know how to cope with the ‘problems’. A couple moved into hotels or stayed with family elsewhere until the crisis was over. As for us, this was the life I was used to as a child. We went into bungalow mode and had more fun than anyone could imagine… living in the past? … or preparing for the future? … Think about it, and don’t jump too quickly to the wrong conclusion.
Above all, Jan Hull’s book, Where’s Home?, has made me think. It has made me think deeply about my own life, my own memories, my own restless, rootless existence, my own attempts to settle and resettle. More, in light of the pandemic with so many working from home, so much home schooling, and so much online back and forth, maybe we, the artists, the returnees, the WAH (Work At Homers), maybe we are not stranded, forgotten, on the back-burners of modern life. Maybe, just maybe, we are the fore-tellers, the front-runners, the pioneers of how a better, more meaningful existence may be created and kept. Thank you, Jan, and please thank all your contributors on my behalf.
Where’s Home (2) Part II of an open letter to Jan Hull
I ended yesterday’s letter with the words “There is a brighter side too, and I will get to that another day.” This is the day, and the brighter side is the sacredness of place. The Celtic Nations believe strongly in the sacredness of place. In the old religions we believed that places held spirits who dwelt in the rivers and streams, who lived in the trees and the orchards, who were a large part of the spirit of place and sacred space. You can still read some of this innate pantheism in The Chronicles of Narnia. Irish, Scottish, Welsh, French … we all have Celtic roots and, like the First Nations of Canada, we still believe in the sanctity of the land. This is an old tradition and a worthy one. Not all great ideas were born in Western Culture post the Industrial Revolution. Many pre-date our so called modern culture. Some should replace it.
I believe very strongly in the power of place. Sometimes, turning a corner one day, we know we are home. This is the feeling that comes so strongly through the second chapter of your book, Jan. Yes, the Maritimes (NB, NS, and PEI) are home for many people. It is indeed their One Small Corner. their querencia. What is a querencia, you ask? Well, it is the place that calls you, the place in which you want to live, the place in which you want to die. And yes, in this time of pandemic, death is on all our minds: those twin realities, sickness and death. Neither is easy. These times are not easy. But they become easier for those of us rooted in our time and our place and, like it or not, the human being, male, female, or other, must live in a dialog with their own time and place. This is the chrono- (time) -topos (place) of the Russian Philosopher, Mikhail Bakhtin.
Life is so much easier when we are in our own beloved space. When we are out of it, away from home, down the road, that is when we suffer most, Sometimes we are still able to flourish. Oftentimes, we wither and perish, like leaves on the tree. You, in your book, Where’s Home?, have offered us a glimpse of what that one small corner, the province of Nova Scotia, means to your correspondents and the ones with whom you have held dialog. We are all of us richer for that experience. Thank you, Jan, and on all our behalves, mine particularly, please thank your contributors.
And this is the good thing, to find your one small corner and to have your one small candle, then to light it, and leave it burning its sharp bright hole in the night.
Around you, the walls you constructed; inside, the reduced space, the secret garden, the Holy of Holies where roses grow and no cold wind disturbs you.
“Is it over here?” you ask: “Or over here?”
If you do not know, I cannot tell you.
But I will say this: turning a corner one day you will suddenly know that you have found a perfection that you will seek again, in vain, for the rest of your life.
rogermoorepoet 