My mother refuses to get connected. She resisted owning a DVD player until my little brother bought her one and hooked it up. She despises cell phones and despite her children worrying about her driving the long stretches of sparsely inhabited road between Idabel and Paris, TX and Forman, AR, she insists she would rather be eaten up by wolves than use a blasted cell phone--although it's the two not four legged wolves that we are worried about. As a result, my mom hasn't read much of my blog. I have been writing on this blog for over a year now before that Blogspot one since 2008- (saphirelucy@blogspot.com). I'm not a consistent writer, I have been known to abandon it for months at a time, but like an unfaithful lover, I always return.
For a coming home present this time, I purchased mom a kalaidoscope from the Huntington Garden's gift shop and a self-printed copy of some of my posts. I included all the posts on this blog and culled through some of the ones that I thought she might enjoy over the past 8 years. It was an interesting exercise. What I learned is that I had forgotten a number of the details that I had committed to print. And I am an atrocious speller--I doubt I could spell my way out of a paper bag.
I presented the gifts to mom last night. She said that was proud of me and that she would put my bound musing with my poetry. She then asked if I still wrote poetry. I don't write poetry at all now--not sure why I abandoned it, my guess is that I landed on article writing as more satisfying creative outlet. A year or so after I stopped writing poetry, I started writing for The Outsider--an expat magazine in Hiroshima.
Mom, showed me two poems I sent to her while I lived in Hamada, a small port city on the sea of Japan. The first is on the Bon Odori which is the Dance of Dead a festival in late summer to honor the ancestors. I love the Bon season.
The Bon Odori
There comes a season
When the past is recalled
A hot summer night
Distant drums beckon
Lanterns guide the way
Following as if in a dream
I happen upon a scene
From times long forgotten
Kimono clad neighbors dancing in rhythm
Eiere ghostly music, joyously solemn
Entertainment for ancestors
who have made their yearly pilgrimage
Home from the other side of death
I look on with ghostly companions
I can almost feel them remembering
When they themselves danced the Bon Odori
When I lived in Hamada, I had a motor scooter that I would tool around town on. I lived just a couple of miles from the beach and it was accessible on the scooter through back roads. Just as I before rounding the corner when the beach would come into view, there was a lotus field that I always found poetic. My favorite time to go the beach was right at sunset--all the day tourists from Hiroshima were packed up and on their way back across the mountain leaving me with a quiet empty beach. One evening in the twilight, I stopped to enjoy the moment with an Obasan (grandmother).
Obasan
The sun sits over a field of lotus
The dying embers of today
light up a face who has known many yesterdays
Obasan, how many sunsets have you seen?
How many changes have there been?
Your weather beaten face speaks of harsh times better to be forgotten
Your bent back speaks of countless burdens borne.
Obasan I sit by your side
cultures and generations apart
but I too, find beauty in the sun setting over a lotus field.
Obasan
These two poems are not too bad and bring back the memories that inspired the words.
But I was curious to see what I would think of bulk of my poetry after a couple of decades of distance. In my early twenties, I put together a chapbook from my parents as seen above. Clearly the work produced prior to the desktop publishing revolutions. In fact, I used a pretty persnickety typewriter and a trip to Kinko's to complete the project.
Many of the poems are cringe worthy, but some of them capture, my thoughts and beliefs pretty clearly.
Most of the poems were written somewhere between 1988 and 1993. This was a time when I was moving in and out of Japan, looking at America from the outside. During this time, we were counseled that it would take between 6 months to a year if we were lucky to get a job after graduation. Many of my friends were choosing to go on for graduate degrees in order to stave off the student loan repayments.
I embraced the opportunity live my life long dream of travel and living abroad. Looking at these words today--I think that they resonate with me. I was a political science major, so a few of my poems were calls for social consciousness. When I look at the news today, I pretty much echo these thoughts each and every time, I see a life taken senselessly either by radicalized extremists or our beleaguered police who seem to be making knee-jerk decisions and unable to respond by listening first.
And this concern about my the county I love is even more heartfelt that it ever was when I penned these words.
Do I ever feel that she is lost in her own righteousness and people are many are seeking to return to a past that wasn't all that great for a great many of us.
Maybe this is why I gave up on poetry. Maybe, poetry plumbs the darker corners of my psyche.