"There is No Frigate Like a Book"

May 18th. My mother's birthday. She would have been 105 this year. She was a reader, quick and comprehending which accounts for my reading habits. The Memory Keeper's Daughter, A Girl of the Limberlost, Charley's Aunt, Brother Cadfael's Penance, The Wisdom of Father Dowling, Sister Angelica, The Pilot's Wife, Cry, the Beloved Country, Cousin Bette, Uncle Vanya, I Remember Mama, The Admiral's Niece: Or, a Tale of Nova Scotia. All favorites. Do you see the pattern? It's as though I like hatching a family on my bookshelf. A few years ago I was thinking of writing a memoir I was going to call An American Child in a Foreign Field. I'm glad I didn't. Oh, I could keep the title and try again but the content would be different as my perspective has changed. As I mentioned last week, Mrs. Chamberlain believed she could hop out of her body to Japan every night. Cheryl's blog was about how she is a gypsy at heart and although she has traveled widely, she feels the strongest pull is that of obligations at home. I have begun to see my poems as a form of time/gypsy travel. How lucky I am to be able to still be the "wand'ring minstrel" simply by scratching a few lines with my pen! I remember one of the first poems I had published in a small press publication, the editor commented on what a lovely trip it was. Since this was back in the days of druggie Haight hippies and my poem entry was from California, I suspect he thought it was an LSD trip. Being a lifelong teetotaler with hot water as my drink of choice, this amused me. It's true, though. On examining my poems, I realize they are trips. In fact, in this one I wrote early last year, I even use the phrase time-traveler. So--I, too, am a gypsy at heart with the pull of obligations familial as my "home."

MXXXV

My dream was release from the bondage of age.
In lavender fields where blind children play,

a delicate ladder appeared;
a spiral it was, spinning towards me.
Suddenly I was thrown--
higher, farther than the ancient stars

Telemachus once charted
while waiting for Odysseus.
Leaping, twirling, through a palette
of colors formerly unknown,
I was caught by Love's bright messenger.
Drops of holy water formed a crystal tiara.
Out of my hand grew peach scented roses
and in my hair a thousand notes of a new song
accompanied the aerialist's shape-shifting--
tossing, reaching, falling, dying.
The night expanded like a time-traveler's journal
which on the final page had these words:
"Return."

...may the blessings of whatever manner you choose to venture forth be with you these sunny days...