“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”
ROALD DAHL
Painting: “The False Mirror” (1928) by René Magritte
IRONING
by Vicki Feaver
I used to iron everything:
my iron flying over sheets and towels
like a sledge chased by wolves over snow;
the flex twisting and crinking
until the sheath frayed, exposing
wires like nerves. I stood like a horse
with a smoking hoof,
inviting anyone who dared
to lie on my silver padded board,
to be pressed to the thinness
of dolls cut from paper.
I’d have commandeered a crane
if I could, got the welders at Jarrow
to heat me an iron the size of a tug
to flatten the house.
Then for years I ironed nothing.
I put the iron in a high cupboard.
I converted to crumpledness.
And now I iron again: shaking
dark spots of water onto wrinkled
silk, nosing into sleeves, round
buttons, breathing the sweet heated smell
hot metal draws from newly washed
cloth, until my blouse dries
to a shining, creaseless blue,
an airy shape with room to push
my arms, breasts, lungs, heart into.
SOURCE: “Ironing” appears in Vicki Feaver‘s collection The Handless Maiden (Random House, 1994), available at Amazon.com.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Vicki Feaver (born Nottingham , England, 1943) is an English poet. She studied music at Durham University and English at University College, London, and later worked as a lecturer and tutor in English and Creative Writing at University College, Chichester, where she is an Emeritus Professor. She now lives with her psychiatrist husband in Dunsyre, South Lanarkshire, Scotland, at the foot of the Pentland Hills. She is the author of The Book of Blood, Close Relatives, and The Handless Maiden. The Book of Blood was shortlisted for both the Forward Prize and the Costa Poetry Award. (Read more at Wikipedia.org.)
Painting: “A Woman Ironing” by Edgar Degas (1873)
GIFT
by Czeslaw Milosz
A day so happy.
Fog lifted early. I worked in the garden.
Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers.
There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.
I knew no one worth my envying him.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.
To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.
In my body I felt no pain.
When straightening up, I saw the blue sea and sails.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004) was born in Lithuania and lived for many years in Poland. He moved to the U.S. in 1960 and subsequently became and American citizen. From 1961-1998, he was a professor of Slavic Languages and Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1980, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Painting: “Cliffs and Sailboats at Pourville” by Claude Monet (1882)
THE WIND
by Robert Louis Stevenson
I saw you toss the kites on high
And blow the birds about the sky;
And all around I heard you pass,
Like ladies’ skirts across the grass
Oh wind, a blowing all day long,
Oh wind, that sings so loud a song!
I saw the different things you did,
But always you yourself you hid.
I felt you push, I heard you call,
I could not see yourself at all
Oh wind, a blowing all day long!
Oh wind, that sings so loud a song!
O you that are so strong and cold,
O blower, are you young or old?
Are you a beast of field and tree,
Or just a stronger child than me?
O wind, a blowing all day long,
O wind, that sings so loud a song!
***
Painting by Claude Monet (1840-1926). Prints available at allposters.com.
SKYTONES (Section X)
Poem by Pablo Neruda
I invite you to topaz,
to the yellow
hive in the stone,
the bees,
and the lump of honey
in the topaz
to the gold day
and the familial
drone of tranquility:
here is a minimal
church, built in a flower
as the bee builds, as
the planes of the sun or the leaf
in autumn’s yellowest profundity,
a tree, incandescently
rising, beam over beam, a sunburst corolla,
insect and honey and autumn, all
transformed by the salts of the sun:
essence of honey, the tremulous world
and the wheat of the sky
that labored to accomplish
this sun-change, at rest in the pallor of topaz.
Painting: “Wheatfield with Reaper” (1889) by Vincent van Gogh
Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt. Poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.”
LEONARDO DA VINCI (1452-1519)
Painting: “La Scapigliata” (woman’s head) by Leonardo da Vinci, oil on panel (1508), currently housed at Galeria Nazionale di Parma.
AQUA VITA
by Dale Sprowl
A color of aqua lives,
fantastically far from real;
Once I saw it behind Pablo Neruda’s house
in a dream,
a stripe of Chilean ocean, cool and green.
Another time,
though this one real,
I saw it at the beach on Aruba,
Blown with racing winds,
sea over shallow white sand
pale as a pool.
Once I found it in nature
as I stared down at ice floes on Greenland,
white chunks cut into black lake,
each framed by numinous liquid refreshment.
And another time I saw it.
Would you call it real or not?
In Vincent’s sky in “The White Orchard.”
When I saw it,
I wept,
uncontained,
until I saw it again in “The Plow”
and knew I was at home there.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Dale Sprowl teaches writing at Biola University in La Mirada, California. During summers, she administrates and teaches at the Young Writer’s Project at UCI. Her work with the UCI Writing Project began in 1981, and she has contributed to the UCIWP texts on the teaching of writing. Her first chapbook of poems, The Colors of Water, published by Finishing Line Press in 2007, and her second chapbook, Moon Over Continent’s Edge (2009), have been nominated for a California Book Award. Her poems have also appeared in PEARL, Fire, A New Song, Ancient Paths, and Knowing Stones: Poems of Exotic Places. She earned her bachelor’s degree in humanities and in history as well as a master’s degree in history from Pepperdine University. An Educator Associate for the American Psychoanalytic Association, she lives in Newport Beach, California, with her husband.
“Aqua Vita” and other poetry by Dale Sprowl appears in the Silver Birch Press Green Anthology, a collection of poetry & prose from authors around the world — available at Amazon.com.
Painting: “The White Orchard” by Vincent van Gogh (1888)
GIFT
by Czeslaw Milosz
A day so happy.
Fog lifted early. I worked in the garden.
Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers.
There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.
I knew no one worth my envying him.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.
To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.
In my body I felt no pain.
When straightening up, I saw the blue sea and sails.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004) was born in Lithuania and lived for many years in Poland. He moved to the U.S. in 1960 and subsequently became and American citizen. From 1961-1998, he was a professor of Slavic Languages and Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1980, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Painting: “Cliffs and Sailboats at Pourville” by Claude Monet (1882)
Happy is so momentary — you’re happy for an instant and then you start thinking again. Interest is the most important thing in life; happiness is temporary, but interest is continuous.”
GEORGIA O’KEEFFE, American Artist (1887-1986)
Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant; there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.” GEORGIA O’KEEFFE
Painting: “Jimson Weed” (Oil on canvas, 1932) by Georgia O’Keeffe
Silver Birch Press 