Literary Wildflower Walk This Saturday!

This Saturday, May 9th, come take a poetry and wildflower walk with me at the Luquer-Marble Wildflower Garden in Ward Pound Ridge Reservation in Cross River, New York. At stops along the way, you will hear poems that mirror or speak to the natural setting. Selected poems include works by Mary Oliver, Charles Wright, Louise Gluck, Emily Dickinson, Tomas Transtromer, Linda Pastan, and many others. If you're inspired, share a quote or brief poem of your choice that reflects the season. We'll meet at the Trailside Museum at 1:00 PM. A couple of days ago the primroses were on the cusp of opening, Jacob's ladder and spring beauty were in full bloom, and the Jack-in-the-pulpit and trillium were perfection. (The photograph above is of a Jack-in-the-pulpit found there, with lungwort in the background.)

For additional information, click here:
Poetry and Wildflowers Literary Walk

The program is free to the public, although there is a parking fee to enter the reservation. We'll go rain or shine! The walk is easy, with benches along the way.

Here is a spring excerpt from my poem, "Kisses," originally published in The Bitter Oleander, then in Teaching Bones to Fly, my first full-length collection:

The kiss unfurls feathery green
along each branch,
sets to beating the pale hearts of apples
still hidden in blossoms.
Between our lips:
an orchard in a white dream of fruit.

The Poetry and Wildflowers event is sponsored by Friends of Trailside and Ward Pound Ridge Reservation with additional funding by Poets & Writers, Inc. using public funds from the NYS Council on the Arts, a state agency.

The Miniaturist

Sitting here finishing my Chicken Marsala, I just remembered that I had a poem, "The Miniaturist," that would be so fitting to post on this cold and blustery November night. Then I realized that I also had new photos that I took at a strange little doll museum in Vermont. Synthesis.

THE MINIATURIST

Here, in his cellar workshop,
a human sneeze could topple a world.
He confines his vision to the rooms
of the red and blue dollhouse.
Within a cone of golden light,
his hands are steady,
everything perfectly focused.
He balances a poppy seed bead of glue
on the tip of a toothpick,
attaches fringe to a rug
sewn from a scrap of his robe.
For his silent family,
he snips the hair from his head,
paints their eyes and smiling lips
with a single-bristle brush.

At dusk he lights the tiny lamps
and dreams himself inside.
Admit it, you're in there, too --
feet propped on the tapestry footstool,
hands clasped behind your neck.
An Afghan the size of a stamp
cozily rests across your lap.
You've turned your back to the missing wall,
to November's early darkness.
A bulb is ablaze
in the miniature fireplace,
its orange glow mistakable for warmth.

-- Christine Boyka Kluge
From Teaching Bones to Fly (2003)
Bitter Oleander Press

The poem was first published in Tar River Poetry, then in Teaching Bones to Fly. The photograph was taken 11/6/08. For more on things miniature, see the June 30th post entitled "The Poetics of Space," complete with a photo of a dollhouse doll. To enlarge the photos, just click on the images.

Lost in Looking

In Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, I love the way Annie Dillard describes “stalking” and observing a muskrat: “But he never knew I was there.” “I never knew I was there, either. For that forty minutes last night I was as purely sensitive and mute as a photographic plate; I received impressions, but I did not print out captions. My own self-awareness had disappeared; it seems now almost as though, had I been wired with electrodes, my EEG would have been flat.” …. “I have noticed that even a few minutes of this self-forgetfulness is tremendously invigorating. I wonder if we do not waste most of our energy just by spending every waking minute saying hello to ourselves. Martin Buber quotes an old Hasid master who said, ‘When you walk across the fields with your mind pure and holy, then from all the stones, and all growing things, and all animals, the sparks of their soul come out and cling to you, and then they are purified and become a holy fire in you.’”

Later in the same chapter Dillard says that “…at the creek I slow down, center down, empty. I am not excited; my breathing is slow and regular. In my brain I am not saying, Muskrat! Muskrat! There! I am saying nothing.” …. “Instead of going rigid, I go calm. I center down wherever I am; I find a balance and repose. I retreat – not inside myself, but outside myself, so that I am a tissue of senses. Whatever I see is plenty, abundance. I am the skin of water the wind plays over; I am petal, feather, stone.”

I was so excited when I read that last line. I felt a beautiful jolt of recognition, a sweet shock of related language and spirit. Here’s an older poem of mine that voices a similar experience:

ALONE

Here I witness my own silent slipping
out of skin into pewter water.
At last, this quiet,
this weightless place up the hill from my house:
moss-softened sound, low frog whistle,
slow ripples on the pond.
A breeze combs my hair to seaweed,
soothes my thoughts petal-smooth.
The gold rib of the moon floats by,
swirling gold along my liquid spine.
At last, all alone, at home
among the tongueless stones.
I am the cold current
riding their glistening backs.

The pond up the road from my house really is a “weightless place,” a peaceful place to shed one's human skin, to become only a still eye witnessing the world, lost in Dillard’s “abundance.” Somehow we feel most alive and engaged when we forget ourselves.

“Alone” was first published in Defined Providence many years ago, then became part of my first book, Teaching Bones to Fly. The photograph of the pond / vernal pool at the top of my road was taken 5/7/08. Last I looked, about a week ago, it was gone. It will return…

Somewhere Between Lilacs and Honeysuckle

Walking uphill past my neighbor's house, somewhere between the white lilacs and the honeysuckle, I noticed a single iris blooming, leaning toward the road as if to greet me. This reminded me of another iris, probably a sister to this one, that my neighbor brought me years ago. Throughout the blooming season, she delivers me surprises of flowers from her yard: magenta azaleas, daffodils, peonies like pale pink tutus. They arrive in an odd assortment of containers, charming in their combinations: tomato cans, vitamin jars, apple juice and water bottles. I stumble upon an unexpected gift of color and perfume, which is followed by the meditative pleasure of arranging the flowers in ceramic and glass vases collected over the years.

That original iris really captivated me. Flowers reveal incredible details when met face to face. I remember observing the iris' beauty and demise over the following days. This fascination resulted in a poem:

Lavender Cathedral

The iris builds its lavender cathedral,
curving three vaulted petals
over a trinity of fringed ones
that leap skyward
through translucent arches.

Three lowest petals
lower long, furred tongues;
carpets of yellow hairs unroll
down the center of each one.

Slowly, flowers fold and curl and darken,
exuding a grapey sweetness as they shrink.
When I touch them,
they are cool and cling to my fingertip
like wrinkled balloons.

One iris forms a withered fist,
soft knuckles sticky with dying,
while the next one up the emerald stem
unfurls a new sanctuary
of captive purple radiance
our eyes enter anew,
worshipping.

"Lavender Cathedral" was first published in The Bitter Oleander, then in an online "gallery" on three candles. It later became part of Teaching Bones to Fly, my first book. The photo of the iris was taken this afternoon. I also found a four-leaf clover at the top of the hill.

Secrets of Blood

Blood loves its caverns of blue and orchid silk,
its slippery tunnels, pink cushions,
fringes and ruffles of flesh.
Red is the color that worships the body,
knocking at your temples,
announcing its ownership proudly.
Amazed at what it holds,
it purrs as it circulates,
touching your inner heart from time to time,
lingering in those velvet chambers,
saying MINE.
Over and over,
deep in your marrow,
it whispers its mantra.

Excerpt (first stanza) from "Secrets of Blood," the first poem in Teaching Bones to Fly, my first book of poetry from Bitter Oleander Press.