While Swimming

While Swimming.

 

Do our spines remember

gills, our bellies

the cool ocean floor?

 

Can we conjure ourselves in

the cavernous deep,

amid the ocean’s unknowable chambers,

resurrect what it was we carried,

intact,

as we slithered ashore?

 

Swimming,

I try summoning

my watery DNA that surely lurks

somewhere.

 

When my arms tire,

and all too soon,

I imagine myself armless,

sleek again, fins as my rudder.

designed for just this.

 

Forced to the surface for air,

is my resentment simply

the helix,

rebelling from memories of diving

deeper and deeper,

skimming the vast reefs, skirting beaches,

circling islands,

until the light finally left the surface

and expectantly, resolutely,

I dive deeper

again.

 

 

 

Tricia McCallum

Eleuthera

February 2014.

Cupid’s Call.

 

Trust your heart if the seas catch fire, live by love though the stars walk backward.
―     E.E. Cummings

 

Young love shall rest with us,

And we will give old Time

his silken wings.

— from A Love Song by Canadian poet W.F. Hawley.

 

To mark Valentine’s Day I’ve gathered together some of my own poems about love to share with you along with a wide assortment by other authors, wonderful poems that I wish I had written myself. From Shakespeare and Bronte to Hirshfield and Cummings.. Interspersed with favourite quotes, and all on the subject of love. Good love, bad love, and everything in between.

Let’s begin with Jane Hirshfield’s “The Promise.”

Stay, I said

to the cut flowers.

They bowed

their heads lower.

 

Stay, I said to the spider,

who fled.

 

Stay, leaf.

It reddened,

embarrassed for me and itself.

 

Stay, I said to my body.

It sat as a dog does,

obedient for a moment,

soon starting to tremble.

 

Stay, to the earth

of riverine valley meadows,

of fossiled escarpments,

of limestone and sandstone.

It looked back

with a changing expression, in silence.

 

Stay, I said to my loves.

Each answered,

Always.

 

This piece is by the transcendent E.E. Cummings. There’s an intensity, a relentlessness to this, among all his poems, that makes it particularly powerful.

i carry your heart

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)

i fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

 

Here’s one from American poet Jena Strong. I am a great fan of her work. You should follow her: She is an amazing writer. www.jenastrong.com

Throwdown

give me the drag queens, dolled up and delicious
the two moms bickering over the dishes
the orphans, adopted, the chosen, the trannies
the witches, the protestors, tattooed laughing grannies
the boys wearing tutus and …all the shirtless
daughters of the revolution playing basketball
on the broken courts of lost fathers
the failures, the forgotten, the throwdown, the freak show
the hurts and the heartbreaks, the hassles and headaches
the beggar, the baron, the shelter, the clambake
trade in the cynical, the stubborn, the splintering showdown
because it’s time to unite now, yes it’s time to ignite now
it’s time to pick up the phone to say, It’s me and I love you

 

From A Love Poem by Garrison Keillor:

I believe in impulse, in all that is green,

Believe in the foolish vision that comes true,

Believe that all that is essential is unseen,

And for this lifetime I believe in you.

 

No treatise on love is complete without an entry from Pablo Neruda.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.

 

Here’s one of mine, a poem called “The Gift of Donovan” that I wrote about a gift from a boyfriend in high school.

 

The Gift of Donovan

A frigid November day in Barrie, Ontario, 1967.

Wednesday, I remember;

We had just come from Novena Devotions.

Mark led me downtown to the town’s one record store,

“For a surprise,” he said.

The proprietor was in on this, I soon realized,

watching him head to the stacks of wooden slots on the wall

and retrieve a disc in its sturdy paper sleeve.

He held it up to show Mark, who nodded his approval.

On went my new record to the turntable and then came

Donovan’s innocent, accented voice,

Wafting through the shop,

Colour sky havana lake
Colour sky rose carmethene
Alizarian crimson… 

The bewitching refrain,

Lord, kiss me once more
Fill me with song
Allah, kiss me once more
That I may, that I may…

Wear my love like heaven…

Colours, worlds I had not yet heard of,

at the age of 15.

Yet, I sensed the magic of which Donovan sang.

Sensed these were things I would one day know.

 

I went on to my life, Mark to his.

Not long after, he died, still a young man,

never giving me a proper chance to thank him for his gifts that day,

to thank him for seeing me in a way I had never seen myself,

as a girl worthy of such an elaborate staging,

to thank him for giving me,

in that tiny frozen town,

an impossibly beautiful song.


 

Excerpt from

To Love Another by Rainer Maria Rilke

For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has ever been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation.

 

Song of the Open Road

by Walt Whitman

 

I give you my hand.

I give you my heart for safe keeping

I give you myself before preaching or law;

Will you give me yourself?

Will you come travel with me?

Shall we always be best friends?

Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

 

This is “Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms” an Irish song written by the poet Thomas Moore in 1808.

How the piece came into being is an affecting story. It is said that after Moore’s wife contracted smallpox, she refused to let herself be seen by anyone, even her husband, due to the disfiguring effects of the disease to the skin on her body, and because she believed he could not love her after her face had been so badly scarred. Despairing at her confinement, Moore composed the lyrics of this song to reassure her that he would always love her regardless of her appearance. He wrote later that after hearing him sing to her from outside her bedroom door, she finally allowed him inside and fell into his arms, her confidence restored.

I found it when I went searching for a verse to read at a friend’s wedding a few years ago. He was a lifelong friend of mine, marrying for the first time, and asked if I would speak at the reception about what marriage meant to me. I’d never been married at that time and was surprised he asked, but honoured he did.

I hunted for a long time for exactly the right piece to read and found this, which I feel expresses so poignantly the kind of love that abides through time and illness and the many vagaries of our lives. This is a love that is very rare indeed and seems to me the only love worth having.

The reception was held in a garden of a lovely home in southern California, with a quartet of musicians softly playing standards in the background. It was just before sunset when I was called to read and the light had taken on that ethereally beautiful violet hue. The bride and groom were watching from a balcony above. The setting was beyond romantic: I hope my reading did justice to the occasion.

Here then is Moore’s eloquent ode to his beloved:

Believe me, if all those endearing young charms,

Which I gaze on so fondly today,

Were to change by tomorrow and fleet in my arms,

Like fairy gifts fading away,

Thou wouldst still be adored, as this moment thou art,

Let thy loveliness fade as it will;

And around the dear ruin each wish of my heart

Would entwine itself verdantly still.

It is not while beauty and youth are thine own,

And thy cheeks unprofaned by a tear,

That the fervor and faith of a soul can be known,

To which time will but make thee more dear.

No, the heart that has truly loved never forgets,

But as truly loves on to the close

As the sunflower turns on her god when he sets

The same look that she turned when he rose.

 

***

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength; loving someone deeply gives you courage.

At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.

The supreme happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved.
 

***

Here’s one of the very first poems I ever wrote:

 

You Were Like…

 

You were like a good stretch after sleeping

An apartment done all in blue.

And Sunday breakfasts

 

Like helpless laughter

Forty-five miles to the gallon

And a table lighter that really works

 

Like lovely soulful hands

Melancholy sunsets

And hopeless romantics like me.

 

 

I simply had to include another by E.E. Cummings. The idea, the image here, of the rain having “small hands” is brilliance itself.

somewhere i have never travelled

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

 

 

This is a poem from my first book about the deep love my parents shared.                                                   

 

Till Death Us Do Part

 

In the afternoons, after the nurse has left and his errands are run,

he perches at the foot of her bed pretending to read,

staring at his book, alert for her movement.

There he sits most days until the light leaves the bedroom windows,     

rising only for essentials.

 

No matter how stealthily he moves, so as not to disturb her,

my mother stirs, calling his name.

“It’s alright, Cathy.” comes his usual, whispered response.

 

“Just so I know you’re there, James,” she says, momentarily comforted,

before succumbing again to her ravaged, fitful sleep.

 

They said vows once,

nearly 50 years ago now.

For richer, for poorer….

Took them to heart

this man, this woman,

and these are two

who actually lived them

and will

in turn

die by them.

 

A Marriage by Michael Blumenthal

You are holding up a ceiling

With both arms. It is very heavy,

But you must hold it up, or else

It will fall down on you. Your arms

Are tired, terribly tired,

And, as the day goes on, it feels

As if either your arms or the ceiling

Will soon collapse.

But then,

Unexpectedly,

Something wonderful happens.

Someone,

A man or a woman,

Walks into the room

And holds their arms up

To the ceiling beside you.

So you finally get

To take down your arms.

You feel the relief of respite,

The blood flowing back

To your fingers and arms.

And when your partner’s arms tire,

You hold up your own again

To relieve him again.

And this can go on like this for many years

Without the house falling.

 

After Love by Maxine Kumin

Afterwards, the compromise.

Bodies resume their boundaries.

These legs, for instance, mine.

Your arms take you back in.

Spoons of our fingers, lips

Admit their ownership.

The nodding yawns, a door

Blows aimlessly ajar

And overhead, a plane

Singsongs coming down.

Nothing is changed, except

There was a moment when

The wolf, the mongering wolf

Who stands outside the self

Lay lightly down, and slept.

 

From Hamlet (written to Ophelia) by William Shakespeare:

Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love

 

The Confirmation by Edwin Muir

Yes, yours, my love, is the right human face.

I, in my mind, had waited for this long,

Seeing the false and searching for the true,

Then found you as a traveler finds a place

Of welcome suddenly amid the wrong

Valleys and rocks and twisting roads.

 

From Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte:


I have for the first time found what I can truly love – I have found you. You are my sympathy – my better self—my good angel—I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my center and spring of life, wraps my existence about you—and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.

 

This is another of my poems:

 

Smoke Signals

 

How can you not think of me

in winter

when afternoons dwindle on

in grayness

remembering our summers

spent wrapped together.

 

Not miss me late at night

in the absolute stillness

when nothing stands between you

and your memories of me.

 

Don’t you have moments

when the pain is too much

when you get tired of saying onwards

when you get tired of alone.

 

Don’t you yearn

to etch my name

onto frosted windows

carve it

into the bark of trees

trail it

in smoke across skies

shout it at will.

 

As if by doing so

I will magically come again

having been beckoned

with such longing.

 

 

A Love Song by Canadian poet W.F. Hawley

Yes, I will love you when the sun

Throws first light upon a thousand new flowers;

When winter’s biting breath is gone,

And spring brings on the happier hours.

And I will call you beautiful –

More beautiful than May’s brightest signs,

Though all the air be filled with sweetness

And every bird his song again finds.

 

I’ll love you when the autumn winds

Sweep across our window pane;

When the last flower finds its cold bed

And birds are far away again:

When the last pale and withered leaf

Along the swollen stream floats on —

One thought of you shall give relief,

Though bright and lovely things are gone.

 

And I will shield you when the breath

Of winter beats upon the earth;

And we will laugh at nature’s death.

 

Young love shall rest with us,

And we will give old Time

his silken wings.

 

When asked for the source of his greatest creative inspiration, American singer songwriter Bob Dylan selected Scots poet Robbie Burns’ 1794 song A Red, Red Rose as the lyrics that have had the biggest effect on his life.

 

O my love is like a red, red rose,

That’s newly sprung in June;

O my love’s like the melody

That’s sweetly played in tune.

 

As fair thou art, my bonnie lass,

So deep in love am I,

And I will love thee still, my dear

Till a’ the seas gang dry.

 

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,

And the rocks melt wi’ the sun,

I will love thee still, my dear,

while the sands of life shall run.

 

And fare thee well, my only love,

And fare thee well a while,

And I will come again my love ,

Though it were ten thousand mile.


 

Enough

I am writing like a mad person, working on what seems to be building (inexorably) toward a collection of poems about life in small towns.

Right now I am struggling with one piece, and working on a description of the head cashier at the supermarket where I worked part-time through high school, who fascinated and yet repelled me simultaneously. Her name was Shirley, she held her own with the overbearing male managers, and she was fearless. She seized upon whatever power she could in those days, it seems. I realize now how strong she really was.

So that’s my project for today. It is tentatively titled “Wearing Red.” I shall post it once I wrestle it to the ground.

Michelangelo said the work of art awaited him beneath the slab of marble, merely for him to uncover it. In my own small way I understand that as I write these days. The poem I know is possible waits patiently at the other side across a murky divide and with luck and patience maybe I can reach it, reveal it.

Here is  one I wrote about a barbecue years ago in the small town where I lived.

Enough

A barbecue and swim after work had brought us together

around the campfire that summer evening,

An impromptu thing teenagers do best:

You bring the beer. I’ll bring the chips.

 

I watched her run up from the water laughing.

As I write this her name comes back to me: Yvonne.

Fresh from her swim she stood close to the fire

in her tiny yellow bikini

drying her waist-length sheet of onyx-colored hair with a towel.

 

She seemed so utterly assured of herself in the task at hand,

so composed for a young girl,

tossing her head languidly from side to side

then taking a large hounds tooth comb and slowly pulling it through

that glorious hair of hers.

 

She must have known we all followed her every move,

couldn’t help but know it by the silence

that had enveloped her ritual,

the flames casting an unreal glow on that hair,

that perfect form and face.

 

The men particularly stared in awe

at this goddess from Okinawa who’d ended up

in our backwater of all places,

in their midst.

I watched the men’s faces watching her,

knowing even at 16 I would never possess the audacity

that was Miss Yvonne Tsubone’s that night,

and for as long as it lasted,

that which comes from sheer and absolute physical beauty,

a calling card that says,

without words:

I am perfect just as I am:

what I am is

enough.

 

Retrospect

I always thought roses would have been nice,

great, mysterious boxes of them

delivered to my door,

but I am older now

and realize that roses are extravagant after all.

 

I’ve had my days

of sitting dreamy-eyed at lunches with the girls

while they recounted their latest escapades.

Now I know better: only half of me listens

while the other half studies the menu.

 

I’ve been known to envy couples on street corners

entwined in each other,

but I am past that

and instead

take stock in my independence.

 

I’ve fantasized about dancing to waltzes,

slow, whimsical ones with lots of sax,

being whirled around an empty ballroom,

but styles have changed

and disco is the rage again.

 

If all be told

I’ve even craved an eloquent invitation to dinner

complete with reservations and candles,

but I have lived without it

and now find pleasure in eating alone.

 

As you can see

in retrospect I have managed fine,

but from time to time I have also wished

that roses

weren’t quite so beautiful.

 

(Photo entitled “Blanca” by John Benigno.)

What Are They Waiting For?

What Are They Waiting For?

The little face stares out at me

from the faded poster

in the front window of the Tops Market,

partially obscured by

an ad for Downy,

and one for L’il Debbie’s Snack Cakes,

Buy one get one free.

 

Stephen. His name is Stephen.

Quick math tells me

he’s been missing three years.

Makes him nine now.

This would not quite

be his face anymore.

 

Time goes on.

The poster is faded, curled at the edges.

It needs replaced, updated.

Stephen looks straight ahead

and will tomorrow from the same place

with the same face.

Passive, calm,

he waits for us

to find him.

 

 

The Edge of the World

Glancing down at my bare feet

I see plainly the feet of my forebears:

long thin finger-like toes that link us,

irrefutably, astonishingly, across time,

these claw-like appendages that enabled them

to scale the cliffs of St. Kilda

in search of seabird eggs for food.

 

Ropes tied to their waists

barefoot Kildamanes as young as four

rappelled off the island’s vertical rock faces,

two sea stacks jutting out of the Atlantic

like giant pointed teeth.

 

For hundreds of years this resolute tribe

foraged for the eggs their lives depended on

among the hidden ledges and wind-battered crags

where the gannets, puffins and fulmar roosted,

eggs their only hope of sustenance

in that unforgiving place,

further out even than the Hebrides.

Fishing, incongruously,

considered too dangerous a pursuit.

Salt killed crops stone dead.

Trees steadfastly refused to grow.

Stories say the sea beat so hard in one storm

it blew sheep and cattle over the cliffs,

left villagers deaf for a week.

 

Survive they did,

surrounded by nothing but birds,

churning blue black ocean and stretched-out skies,

until visitors brought maladies they were defenseless against.

The seabirds owned it first:

it is theirs alone,

again.

 

I study the ominous hunting grounds of these birdmen,

my ancestors,

I see the spectacular waves battering the shore.

I look down at my feet,

their feet, wiggle my long agile toes

and whisper

in Gaelic,

the only language they knew,

Cuimhním.

I remember.

 

Photo courtesy of Alex Mahler.

 

 

Flying Over West Texas at Christmas

I will occasionally share with you work of other poets that stop me in my tracks. This is one, by the sublimely talented Billy Collins.

Oh, little town far below
with a ruler line of a road running through you,
you anonymous cluster of houses and barns,
miniaturized by this altitude
in a land as parched as Bethlehem
might have been somewhere around the year zero—

a beautiful song should be written about you
which choirs could sing in their lofts
and carolers standing in a semicircle
could carol in front of houses topped with snow.

For surely some admirable person was born
within the waffle-iron grid of your streets,
who then went on to perform some small miracles,
placing a hand on the head of a child
or shaking a cigarette out of the pack for a stranger.

But maybe it is best not to compose a hymn
or chisel into tablets the code of his behavior
or convene a tribunal of men in robes to explain his words.

Let us not press the gold leaf of his name
onto a page of vellum or hang his image from a nail.
Better to fly over this little town with nothing
but the hope that someone visits his grave

once a year, pushing open the low iron gate
then making her way toward him
through the rows of the others
before bending to prop up some flowers before the stone.

” ‘Twas Four Nights Without Heat”

We are still not back on the power grid but…

We do finally have a working generator as of about two hours ago. Finally found someone who knew what was wrong with it.

Who knew a generator could be so complicated? And so cranky? When the repair guy-slash-pure-genius-of-a-person successfully cranked it up I momentarily thought it was the cherubim and seraphim serenading me. Maybe it’s a seasonal apparition…

So this is what heat feels like? The house is slowly… inexorably… creakily… responding, along with my extremities. The clothes I have been too cold to remove for the past 88 hours are now in a little pile in the backyard awaiting the administration of a blow torch. My hair has so much static cling I look like Chubakka. (sp?) I have slept a total of two hours in four nights and I woke up three times in that two hours – just to check I still had a pulse.

It’s been a harrowing four days – how low can a core body temperature plummet and still support life as we know it? The jury is still out…I am beginning to form intelligible sentences (or as much as they ever were) now so this must be a promising sign. It must.

Amazing how much can happen during a relatively short time without any heat or power. For starters I know every employee at my nearest Tim Horton’s on a first-name basis, along with the birthdates of all their children, grandchildren and grade school teachers, and any and all of their dietary challenges. I now know exactly the warm fuzzies Norm felt when he went into Cheers and heard his name cheerfully resounding.   In my case: “Tricia!”

It is amazing how many life stories I have been told over the past four days while sitting waiting for any trace of feeling to return to my ten digits and for my smartphone to charge. And not all of those stories are repeatable. Anywhere. trust me. Suffice it to say I have — all my life — had a face that says “Do tell me your story, even the parts that you wouldn’t tell your therapist.”

I have been added to 42 Christmas Card lists and that is at drive through windows alone.

On a more general theme, Timmy’s new and roundly heralded gingerbread doughnuts I am sad to report are overrated although I didn’t come to that realization until my fourth dozen. Note to consumers: Stick with the classic and always reliable Canadian Maple and/or Apple Fritter.

Interesting side note: The coffee shop employees handing me my first coffee of the day within a heated environment began taking on the appearance of angels with actual wings. But that could be simply caffeine withdrawal.

Have a wonderful Christmas full of laughs and great food and even better company. Oh, and best of all: heat.

 

 

 

Zhivago’s Return

When I saw the film Dr Zhivago

what stayed with me most was not

the winter palace sheathed in ice

nor the vicious stabbing of the innocent brother

in the exotic palace ballroom while revellers danced,

not even the two opposing armies,

the row upon row of impossibly young soldiers

grimly approaching one another,

their heavy boots pounding the frozen Moscow street

late in the night,

closer and closer

until face to face.

 

What stayed was this:

Zhivago’s return to Yuryatin

and his beloved Lara

after his escape from the army, his months-long trek across Russia.

How simple it was for him to retrieve the skeleton key

from the niche in the wall below and

climb the snowbound stair

to enter her rooms once again.

To find himself there,

astonishingly,

her tiny apartment fully intact

on that crisp sunny afternoon,

her soup simmering on the stove

while she was briefly away.

 

There is her bed as Zhivago remembered it,

the same linens atop,

the finely-stitched pillow of her grandmother,

her family photos lined up identically

above the fire grate,

warming him now as it ever did.

And the soup spoons

still in the same drawer.

Pawns

Above the island the moon is fully round these nights,

dripping light,

succulent, impossibly

perfect.

But it’s not the wolves that howl here;

it is the waves.

At the curl just offshore comes the low siren of them,

an eerie organic sound building as they cascade on shore.

Controlled, commandeered by the moon

just as the wolves are.

She, all powerful in her sphere,

they, powerless,

mere tools so far below

for her bidding.

Writer and Poet

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Tricia McCallum

Always be a poet. Even in prose.
Charles Baudelaire.

In essence I am a storyteller who writes poems. Put simply, I write the poems I want to read.[…]

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