Ode to Tomatoes - Pablo Neruda and Erica Jong, My Teachers

I wanted to write an ode to the Tomato, goddess of the garden, today after picking that blue bowl above almost full of them from my little garden, my first harvest. This is my first good crop of tomatoes in over 4 or 5 years, yes years! I don’t know why they did so well this year. It could be the four egg shells I put in the earth below each plant to ward off blossom drop, or it could be the saltwater spray I made and sprayed them with, which, according to my sister-in-law’s grandpa is a magic potion that both fertilizes and keeps bugs away.

Some have told me it’s because I planted Basil with my Tomatoes. I think the new soil and new spot may have helped because the old place I used to plant them had black spot disease in the soil. I like to attribute it to love and lots of water and good soil and me watering them, often, with my own salty tears.

I gave up writing my ode (well, I'll still write it, but later) when I remembered that the mighty poet, Pablo Neruda, had already written one and I could never touch the level of his genius. I also recalled that Erica Jong, whose writing turned me on to Neruda, loved to write about fruits and vegetables. It was her writing that taught me to write about the ‘ordinary’ things in my life.

So, humbly bowing in gratitude to these, my teachers, I post a quote by Ms. Jong, a site where many of her poems are posted which you can read at your leisure, and two beautiful masterpieces by Neruda, "Ode to Tomatoes" followed by his magnificent, untouchable "Poetry".


“If a woman wants to be a poet,
She must dwell in the house of the tomato.” ~Erica Jong, from ‘Fruits & Vegetables’


http://www.ericajong.com/poems/


Happy Summer to you all! Blessings, ~Marion





Ode To Tomatoes
By Pablo Neruda


The street
filled with tomatoes,
midday,
summer,
light is
halved
like a tomato,
its juice runs
through the streets.
In December, unabated,
the tomato
invades the kitchen,
it enters at lunchtime,
takes its ease
on countertops, among glasses,
butter dishes, blue salt cellars.
It sheds
its own light,
benign majesty.
Unfortunately, we must
murder it: the knife sinks
into living flesh,
red viscera a cool
sun, profound, inexhaustible,
populates the salads of Chile,
happily, it is wed
to the clear onion,
and to celebrate the union
we pour oil,
essential child of the olive,
onto its halved hemispheres,
pepper adds
its fragrance,
salt, its magnetism;
it is the wedding of the day,
parsley hoists its flag,
potatoes bubble vigorously,
the aroma of the roast
knocks at the door, it's time!
come on! and, on
the table, at the midpoint of summer,
the tomato,
star of earth, recurrent
and fertile star, displays
its convolutions,
its canals,
its remarkable amplitude
and abundance,
no pit, no husk, no leaves or thorns,
the tomato offers its gift
of fiery color
and cool completeness.


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I can't even think of Neruda without this poem coming into my head. I've probably posted it many times before, but I never tire of reading it. Enjoy!



POETRY
By Pablo Neruda


And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.


I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering that fire,
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.
And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery, felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.


**************************

Ars Poetica, Modern Sorcery and Song of the Builders---Poems I Love

I share with you three of my photographs and three of my favorite poems by Archibald MacLeish, Charles Simic and Mary Oliver. It's a lazy, hot Sunday here in drought-ridden, scorching Louisiana.

Even the exotic, black and yellow grasshopper came out for a drink of hose water this morning as I watered the drooping, brown flora and fauna, and I captured a photo of him! Wishing you cooling summer showers, peace, blessings, health and happiness. ~Marion~

ARS POETICA

By Archibald MacLeish

A poem should be palpable and mute

As a globed fruit,

Dumb

As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone

Of casement ledges where the moss has grown -

A poem should be wordless

As the flight of birds.

*

A poem should be motionless in time

As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases,

twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,

memory by memory the mind -

A poem should be motionless in time

as the moon climbs.

*

A poem should be equal to:

not true.

For all the history of grief

an empty doorway and a maple leaf

For love

the leaning grasses and two lights above the sea -

A poem should not mean

but be.

Modern Sorcery

By Charles Simic

You could have been just another maggot

squirming over history's roadkill.

Instead a witch took pity on you, lucky fellow,

made you say abracadabra, and much else

you didn't understand

while you held on to the hem of her skirt.

You know neither the place nor the hour

of your transfiguration.

A kitten lapping a drop of milk

fallen from the Blessed Virgin's breast

in a church at dawn. That's how it felt:

the two of you kneeling there.

Outside, there was a flash of lightning

like a tongue passed over a bloody knife,

but you were safe.

Hexed once and for all in her open arms,

giddy and tickled pink with her sorcery.

From: "Staying Alive, Real Poems for Unreal Times" edited by Neil Astley

Song of the Builders

By Mary Oliver

On a summer morning
I sat down
on a hillside
to think about God -
a worthy pastime.
Near me, I saw
a single cricket;
it was moving the grains of the hillside
this way and that way.
How great was its energy,
how humble its effort.
Let us hope
it will always be like this,
each of us going on
in our inexplicable ways
building the universe.

from: "Why I Wake Early" (2004)

Lucille Clifton, a Woman Who Knows

It's been a while since I posted some poems by my favorite poets, so I'll try to remedy that today. I picked up "Blessing the Boats" by the mighty Lucille Clifton early this morning and fell head over heels back in love with Ms. Clifton's amazing writing. She has no equal, in my humble opinion, and her sense of womanly knowing is phenomenally perfect. She's a survivor.

Here are a few of my favorite poems from this book, which is a delicious poetic feast. Buy it for yourself because you'll need to go back to it over and over again! It's heart-healing, soul-stirring and life-affirming. You'll see---

Blessings, Love & Peace, ~Marion

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PRAISE SONG
By Lucille Clifton

to my aunt blanche
who rolled from grass to driveway
into the street one sunday morning.
i was ten. i had never seen
a human woman hurl her basketball
of a body into the traffic of the world.
Praise to the drivers who stopped in time.
Praise to the faith with which she rose
after some moments then slowly walked
sighing back to her family.
Praise to the arms which understood
little or nothing of what it meant
but welcomed her in without judgment,
accepting it all like children might,
like God.

*******

1994
by Lucille Clifton

i was leaving my fifty-eighth year
when a thumb of ice
stamped itself hard near my heart

you have your own story
you know about the fears the tears
the scar of disbelief

you know that the saddest lies
are the ones we tell ourselves
you know how dangerous it is

to be born with breasts
you know how dangerous it is
to wear dark skin

i was leaving my fifty-eighth year
when i woke into the winter
of a cold and mortal body

thin icicles hanging off
the one mad nipple weeping

have we not been good children
did we not inherit the earth

but you must know all about this
from your own shivering life

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

hag riding
By Lucille Clifton

why
is what i ask myself
maybe it is the afrikan in me
still trying to get home
after all these years
but when i wake to the heat of morning
galloping down the highway of my life
something hopeful rises in me
rises and runs me out into the road
and i lob my fierce thigh high
over the rump of the day and honey
i ride i ride

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

A Little Federico Lorca, A Little Naomi Nye

Dragonflies swarm me every time I go outside lately, fighting each other to have their picture taken. This green one posed the longest, so he won. I share a couple of poems I love below.

Peace, Blessings, Love and Poetry to You All----Marion, fighting the blues.....

Excerpt From: "Morning"
by Federico Garcia Lorca



"...The morning is bright
Smoke rises from hearths
and lifts the fog in its arms.

Listen to the ballads
water sings under the poplars:
they are wingless birds
lost in the grass!


Trees that sing
dry out and fall;
tranquil mountains
age into plains.
But the song of water
is a thing eternal.

It is light made song
of romantic illusions
It is soft yet firm,
full of sky and gentle.

It is mist and rose
of eternal morning.
Moon-honey that flows
from buried stars....."



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You Know Who You Are
By Naomi Shihab Nye

Why do your poems comfort me, I ask myself.
Because they are upright, like straight-backed chairs.
I can sit in them and study the world as if it too
were simple and upright.


Because sometimes I live in a hurricane of words
and not one of them can save me.
Your poems come in like a raft, logs tied together,
they float.
I want to tell you about the afternoon
I floated on your poems
all the way from Durango Street to Broadway.


Fathers were paddling on the river with their small sons.
Three Mexican boys chased each other outside the library.
Everyone seemed to have some task, some occupation,
while I wandered uselessly in the streets I claim to love.

Suddenly I felt the precise body of your poems beneath me,
like a raft, I felt words as something portable again,
a cup, a newspaper, a pin.
Everything happening had a light around it,
not the light of Catholic miracles,
the blunt light of a Saturday afternoon.
Light in a world that rushes forward with us or without us.
I wanted to stop and gather up the blocks behind me
in this light, but it doesn't work.
You keep walking, lifting one foot, then the other,
saying, "This is what I need to remember"
and then hoping you can.

What I Been Up To The Past Few Weeks

I'm so happy, happy, happy to have my computer back up and running as of today! Hooray! My hanging baskets are overflowering with the Pansies and Begonias I planted in them in early Spring. My yard is exploding with bright, vivid, vibrant colors. Along the fence, my yellow Daylilies are blooming like there's no tomorrow. Tee-Hee. Which there isn't if you're a Daylily.

'The whole of life lies in the verb seeing." ~Teilhard De Chardin

This past weekend we went to the annual Melrose Plantation Arts & Crafts Festival near Natchitoches.

http://www.caneriverheritage.org/main_file.php/melrose.php/

(Kelly, Pammy & Quid, it's close to where we stayed along Cane River last year.) This beautiful lady is Ms. Alma, a retired school teacher from Minden, Louisiana who is a fabulous primitive artist. We bought one of her paintings of an angel with a dove on her shoulder. She was kind enough to pose for me and tell me how her friend made that amazing dress for her although she did the intricate handwork herself. We lived a few years in Minden and she may have taught one of my daughters. She had a joie de vivre like no one I've met in a long time. I really admired her for wearing that period costume because it got into the mid-90's by noon!



One of my favorite parts of the festival is re-visiting the magnificent old trees which provide much appreciated shade. If this one could talk, I'm sure it would sprout stories as numerous as its leaves!


This is a partial shot of the front of the plantation. That's Taylor, April and Ray posing for me. I always forget to get a pic of myself. Ha-Ha!


I acquired a new kitten last week. This is Romeo (see the cool little soul-patch on this chin) hanging with Cody. The very day April gave him to me, he immediately took to Cody. God bless that dog. Surely, he was a cat in a past life. He just loves kittens and they worship him right back. Romeo has no tail---well, it's a nub of a tail. He's a bobtailed cat. I named him Romeo because the minute I picked him up at April's house, he began purring very loudly and shamelessly flirting with me. She wouldn't let me have him, but later changed her mind and brought him to my house. Just what I need, another cat!

One of my showy Sunflowers. They're almost bloomed out now, but I'm planting more seeds today. We planted an Orange tree a few weeks ago and it already has tiny oranges on it. I hope it survives. I've been babying it and giving it lots of water, compost and love.

The snowy, tiny, white Yarrow flower with it's feathery green leaves. One of my favorite herbs to grow. I made my own Yarrow sticks for practicing the I Ching one year. Yarrow flowers have long, sturdy stems.

"The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware---joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware." ~Henry Miller

And I leave you with a photo of April's latest work of art. It's a large painting of her sitting with pages from her favorite books and comic art (Emily the Strange) decoupaged onto the canvas. She's so talented! See you all again soon. I've got to go read blogs now and get caught up!!!

Hugs, Blessings and Love,

~Marion

"The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair." ~Walker Percy

***

"Why tell animals living in the water to drink?"

--West African Proverb

A Poem to Revive Your Heart, by Lisel Mueller, an Amazing Poet

Oh, my dear, sweet friends, how I miss you all! I'm still not up and running at home. Due to my lack of patience and horrible menopausal temper, I've hung up three times after being on hold with AT&T for hours trying to get to someone in tech support with half a brain. Sigh. Frustration----If I can't get it running this week, I'm going to call a computer friend and pay him to help me get it fixed. Sigh. It's always something. Last week the refrigerator went out, wouldn't cool at all.....Not the freezer part, but the refrigerator. We called our trusty appliance repairman who fixed it for $130, much less that a new frig would have cost. But now it's freezing our milk! Oy!

But, once again, poetry came to my rescue. I found a set of four discs of poetry at the library last week read by the poets and came across this poem which I'd read years ago and, in fact, own the book it's from, "Alive Together" by Lisel Mueller which I highly recommend. Every poem in it is heart-rending and soul-stirring. As soon as I heard it I wanted to run and share it with y'all! I cry every time I re-read it!!!

I had an epiphany that my poet/blogger friends are a rare and treasured lifeline. All my life I've only known a handful of people who even tolerated poetry, much less lived, breathed, read and wrote it! But being away for a while has made me realize how precious you have all become to me and how your own poetry has awakened me, soothed me, enlightened me, slapped me in the face, inspired me, and just plain kept me going many days! Thank you all for sharing your hearts and souls with me.

I read all the comments and appreciate them all and thank you for them. Greetings to those of you who are new and please come back. I'm usually around much more often and will be back again soon!

I didn't know before reading this poem that the artist, Monet, did have eye problems and how it affected his art. This poem is a true blending of art and poetry. Read it slowly and enjoy! Hugs, Blessings and Love to you all!! ~Marion



Monet Refuses The Operation
by Lisel Mueller


Doctor, you say there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris and
what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life to
arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon does
not exist and sky and water,
long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom, the
illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolves
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don't know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world is
flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water, above
and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and change our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms and
how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tabula Rasa - My Favorite Word Ever

Every day I wake up is tabula rasa---the blank page reminds me of this! ~Marion

Tabula rasa - (Latin: blank slate) refers to the epistemological thesis that individual human beings are born with no built-in mental content, in a word, "blank", and that their entire resource of knowledge is built up gradually from their experiences and sensory perceptions of the outside world.

Fresh start: an opportunity to start over without prejudice.
The idea that the mind comes into this world as a "blank state".

Anything which exists in a pristine state.

It struck me this morning as I was walking around my rain-washed yard that Mother Nature has lots of love for us, as is shown in so many heart-shaped leaves! These are Elephant Ears.

This heart shaped leaf belongs to my night-blooming Moonflower. No flowers yet, but soon.

Oh, the bright sunshine yellow of the beautiful Squash flower! I have one tiny Squash, so far.


A reason to celebrate today? My very FIRST Sunflower bloom! She looks so shy with her petals slowly unfolding in the gentle morning sun---

Yikes, my hair is SO short! I chopped it all off a few weeks ago for Summer. It's already in the 90's here in the deep South and I had to get it off my neck, but I just kept on cutting---I think I was a hairdresser in a past life. That's a peace sign for y'all, not rabbit ears. LOL! Have a wonderful day!!



Here's a poem that I quoted to my daughter yesterday when she asked me how to plant a new Lime tree. (Unless you mulch and compost a new tree, it will never grow properly!) Yes, poetry does teach us more than pretty words and I love this poem!



Leaves Compared with Flowers

A tree's leaves may be ever so good,
So may it's bark, so may it's wood;
But unless you put the right thing to it's root
It never will show much flower or fruit.



But I may be one who does not care
Ever to have tree bloom or bear.
Leaves for smooth and bark for rough,
Leaves and bark may be tree enough.



Some giant trees have bloom so small
They might as well have none at all.
Late in life I have come on fern.
Now lichens are due to have their turn.



I bade men tell me which in brief,
Which is fairer, flower or leaf.
They did not have the wit to say,
Leaves by night and flowers by day.



Leaves and bark, leaves and bark,
To lean against and hear in the dark.
Petals I may have once pursued.
Leaves are all my darker mood.



~*~Robert Frost ~*~

Monday Hodgepodge of Poems I Love

I awoke to another cloudy day and more beautiful red Roses blooming---yesterday's thunder and clouds produced no rain, so I'm soon off to water my gardens.

The poems below were on my mind when I woke up today and are among my favorites of all time---a few I have memorized. Most came from my book, "A Poem A Day", edited by Karen McCosker and Nicholas Albery. It's a fabulous, eclectic anthology that I bought many years ago and have totally worn out from reading! I also picked up my portable Emerson and paged through and share here a few quotes I had underlined.

I wish you Blessings, Peace and Inspiration Today and Every Day! ~*~Marion

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


"There is a difference between one and another hour of life, in their authority and subsequent effect. Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual. Yet there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Portable Emerson", page 228, 'The Over-Soul'


"St. Augustine described the nature of God as a circle whose center is everywhere and its circumference nowhere." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Portable Emerson", page 209, 'Circles'

---------------------------------------------------------


New Every Morning

Every day is a fresh beginning,
Listen my soul to the glad refrain.
And, spite of old sorrows
And older sinning,
Troubles forecasted
And possible pain,
Take heart with the day and begin again.

Susan Coolidge


*************************************

Come To The Edge

Come to the edge.

We might fall.
Come to the edge.
It's too high!

COME TO THE EDGE!

And they came,
and he pushed,
and they flew.

~Christopher Logue


********************************

The Falcon To The Falconer
By: Jonathan Steffen


Unleash me from your hand
And I will lance the light for you
I'll cut a swordblade on the wind
And pennant it with flight for you
To signal I am yours
If you will free me to be true to you

Unleash me from your hand
And I will mock the sky for you
I'll pull the anger from the air
And make the breezes sigh for you
To show that I am yours
If you will free me to be true to you

Unleash me from your hand
And I will jewel it bright for you
I'll hunt the treasures of the wind
And pluck them into sight for you
To show that I am yours
If you will free me to be true to you

O, cast me from your hand
That I may show my love for you
And throw me to the wind
That I may know my need for you
All darkness on your hand
I'm hooded, pinned, and held by you

O, give me back my wings
That they may bring me back to you


==============================


All Things Pass
By Timothy Leary, homage to Lao Tzu


All things pass
A sunrise does not last all morning
All things pass

A cloudburst does not last all day
All things pass
Nor a sunset all night

But Earth... sky... thunder...
wind... fire... lake...
mountain... water...
These always change

And if these do not last
Do man’s visions last?
Do man’s illusions ?

During the [meditation] session
Take things as they come
All things pass

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Advice to Myself
By Louise Erdrich

Leave the dishes.
Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.
Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.
Don't even sew on a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic-decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in though the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.

~From: "Original Fire: New and Selected Poems", page 149

Highway Poem #7 - Instructions Along the Way

Happy Saturday! A few years back I wrote a series of poems I called the 'Highway Series', metaphors of the roads and highways as life. This little one is a favorite because it was so much fun to write. Every time I read it, I get something different out of it and it never fails to make me smile. It's another of those "read between the lines" poems.

Put what you will in the spaces between the words and be entertained.

Peace, Love, Blessings and Poems to YOU on this rainy, overcast day in Louisiana!

~*~Marion~*~

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Instructions Along the Way

By Marion

One way.
No right turn.
EXIT ONLY!
No turn on red.
STOP!
Yield.
Curves Ahead.
Soft Shoulder.
Men Working.
Slippery When Wet.

Speed Bump.
May Ice in Cold Weather.
Road Narrows.
Dead End.

~Marion

7/3/07

===============================================

Sister Cat, This and That---

My lovely, exotic beauty, Sophie, who was a friend of my old cat, Ramone. We rescued her from a flood over eight years ago when she was a tiny baby. She brought to my mind, this morning, the poem below, "Sister Cat" by Frances Mayes. Enjoy, and Blesssings, Peace & Love to You All. ~Marion



Some needs can never be filled, this poem reminds us.

SISTER CAT
By Frances Mayes

Cat stands at the fridge,
cries loudly for milk.
But I've filled her bowl.
wild cat, I say, Sister,
look, you have milk.
I clink my fingernail
against the rim. Milk.
With down and liver,
a word I know she hears.
Her sad miaow. She runs
to me. She dips
in her whiskers but
doesn't drink. As sometimes
I want the light on
when it is on. Or when
I saw the woman walking
toward my house and
I thought there's Frances.
Then looked in the car mirror
to be sure. She stalks
the room. She wants. Milk
beyond milk. World beyond
this one, she cries.

from Ex Voto, 1995
Lost Roads Publishers, Little Rock, Ark.

This Iris picture is for Delwyn. Doesn't my Iris look a lot like your mystery flower?

Two of my all-time favorite quotes:

Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu - chapter 11

Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub;

It is the center hole that makes it useful.

Shape clay into a vessel;

It is the space within that makes it useful.

Cut doors and windows for a room;

It is the holes which make it useful.

Therefore profit comes from what is there;

Usefulness from what is not there.

************************

"There is an Indian belief that everyone is a house with four rooms: a physical, a mental, an emotional and a spiritual room. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time, but unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not complete."

-- Rumer Godden, House With Four Rooms