Na Po Wri Mo 2

Poem  2

Laughter transcends the phone meeting.
We are all afraid of cliffs.
Plum blossoms float down on me over lunch
the plants, the pond.
Let go, it is okay
to rest in this moment.

Na Po Wri Mo 2013 - Day 1

National Poetry Writing Month - April 2013 - 30 poems in 30 days

http://www.napowrimo.net/

For April I will post a poem a day.  These poems come to me for what they are, out of the air and onto the page and screen. There is not a lot of thought to them, which is good for this exercise. They are coming from the morning wake, the lunch hour break, or the evening whim.  I will post a poem a day. Enjoy, be inspired and write your own!
These are also posted on Facebook with comments.

Poem #1 - April 1, 2013

Haiku

Plum blossoms float down on blue
Sky wide within spring
Drought needs rain, happy not snow!

 

Spring Equinox 2013

Spring Equinox - 2013

The photo to the left is in the hallway of San Felipe de Neri church in Old Town Albuquerque. Leaves are budding.  I remember when I visited Old Town as a tourist and the feeling I got when I came here. It felt like my second home. I could be myself, be "real," be authentic.   Now, two years later, I am being true to myself.  On March 20, 2011 I drove out of snowy  Minneapolis, with snowbanks shoulder high on a foggy morning and my car packed tight, picking up my friend Sandy Benoit.  We had to travel to the middle of Iowa to see the end of the snow line, and by the time we made it to Kansas City, 7 hours later, it was 80 degrees.  Our first overnight was north of Wichita, Kansas in the small town of Emporia, home of the legendary newspaperman William Allen White (I had discovered this on my previous exploratory trip - there always seem writers to guide me in my travels).

The smell of pinon, unique to New Mexico, greeted us when we crossed the border.  That night we stayed in Albuquerque, arriving at sunset after a long and tiring drive and on the morning of March 22nd I met my apartment manager at San Miguel de Bosque to pick up my keys. I had packed air mattresses and everything I'd need in my car for a few days until the moving truck arrived several days later.  Sandy and I were amazed to see green grass, the apartment pool, and planted spring flowers in the entryway. I was ready to kiss the ground!  I hadn't seen the apartment, but I did preview the complex and it was more space than what I expected. Sandy flew home a few days later.  Albuquerque  was paradise for us, and I'm happy to say, it still is for me. I knew about three people here - Margaret Randall, Demetria Martinez and Alicia Ultan.  I had interviewed Margaret previously and made a visit, I was doing writing coaching over the phone with Demetria and had met her at a writing workshop with Anya Achtenberg on a previous visit, and I knew Alicia's mom from Minnesota.  I also quickly met Randy Myklebust, the cousin of a Minnesota friend who was at one of my parties, and he and his wife Diana warmly welcomed me into the world of hot air ballooning!  I've had much fun crewing with them and their balloon Sky Candy.

I bought a house in July and now live two blocks from the Plaza so I can stroll there every day if I like and I am still amazed how following  my instinct brought me here.  I got a few names/emails from Demetria on where the poetry groups were and started hanging out - in any new place, stay with the poets!  My first "regular" place was East of Edith at the Projects and I am so very grateful for the support and openness of the poets and writers there and in the other poetry communities that followed.   Albuquerque gave me my best gift of all, my love John Roche, and our blue impossible dreams are becoming reality as we manage our long-distance relationship, slowly inching closer and closer.

Tonight I just got home from teaching a sestina class to wonderful women who are accomplished poets.  Poetry sustains me, like the flaming fire that keeps circling around itself (thanks to Ezra Pound for a similar line) and the poets are always there for me, in person or on the page, wherever I am.

Over New Year's/Winter Solstice I sent a poem with my holiday letter. It is worth repeating here:

casa del paraiso

There, on the corner, rising

is the house of her dreams.

Once out of reach,

a place of sanctuary rises

with  trombe walls

a wood burning kiva

clawfoot bathtub and decks for tea.

Ah, and in the garden patio

among the trees and mint leaves

the golden fish swim

where Antonio in Bless Me, Ultima

finds his elusive carpa dorada.

From her wandering,

she makes a home for herself

with her gato and her lover.

Trumpet vines declare it is fine to be here,

a place for poets to gather

a place for her to settle where she has no ancestors

but where she feels at home.

In  her house of paradise.

In the distance, the mountains.

-- Jules Nyquist

Vernal Equinox Serependity

Daylight Savings Time Haiku:

Promise of long light
creeps in and jumpstarts spring
Whiteness comes as snow!


Equal Light and Equal Dark - day and night - balance
circles - earth - round - spheres
wind storm
pink dust settles on my Sandias
only yesterday there was uplift, cleansing, dust storm, renewal

Last week I spent some time at my favorite picnic spot near the Rio Grande with my journal. I mostly remember soaking up the quiet, the silence. What will future people remember? The only thing that spoke to me in those moments was the wind.


Serependity: Look for something, find something else and realize that what you have found is more suited to your needs than what you thought you were looking for. (Lawrence Block)


Myths:
the 7 cities of gold
rocks have no consciousness
humans are more important than animals, or birds, or trees
when I jump I will keep on falling


Last year, on the eve of the Vernal Equinox (March 19th) I was performing my farewell poetry gig at the Black Forest Inn in Minneapolis, saying goodbye to friends I knew I'd see again sometime but not know how when. The next day I set out on the road with a friend in my car to start my two-day drive to Albuquerque. It was foggy and rainy. Those posts are chronicled in earlier blog posts, feel free to review them if you haven't seen them before. I didn't know what I would find here, but I know I would continue to search for home. Whatever home means. I knew I would find the high desert I fell in love with on previous visits. I knew a couple of poets, but not intimately. I had no idea of the poetry scene here and how much I would be a part of it and adore all my new friends. I couldn't have planned it this way, I had to let go. I knew if I jumped I would land somewhere.

How would I know I'd find homes for so many poems? How would I know that I'd find a publisher (and good friend) for "Appetites"? How would I know that I'd meet so many friends? How would I know that I'd have a long-distance romantic relationship? How would I know I'd create a studio playhouse for poetry? How would I know a new kitty would find me? How would I know I'd get so much joy from the sky?

Vision - vistas - let it all go and let the wind carry me
feel the open space
feel the love of others
feel the words take me home

I've become busy and entrenched here, just as I was in my "old" life. But one carries on into the next, the turning of the wheel, the change of seasons and one life is not older or newer, just different.

I've done a lot of traveling, more than I thought I would: Minneapolis, New York, Hartford, Chicago... Santa Fe, Las Vegas, Socorro, Magdalena, Corrales, Placitas (and less than I wanted to within my state - the weekends slip by quickly) It's almost been like a sabatical, if I can call it that while still working full-time at my day job. The land and the open space have helped me focus. The mountains are my foundation, the volcanoes my inspiration, the balloons my familiar greeting. It's been a joy to host a few guests of family and friends.



I'll be turning 50 on May 5th - another turning of the wheel, a new decade to explore, but first, the smells of spring...

Migrations

Autumn in Albuquerque.
Autumn Equinox.
Balance.
Climbing walls, looking forward.
Maps.
Boundaries.
Blossoming bursts of color in the high desert.


















Troubadours - the role of the poet as singer, as voice.
Carrier pigeons.
Migrations.
Cranes.
The Rio Grande.
Cottonwoods.
The Sandia Mountains.
The pain that was here.
The healing that remains.





Bald eagles still nest here along the same trees by the river that were pictured in kiva drawings thousands of years ago. Drawings depicting dances for rain.












Looking down on my beautiful city from
Sandia Crest of 10,600 feet,
I am home.


These mountains are major North American travel routes for migratory birds such as red-tailed hawks, golden eagles, sharp-shinned hawks and turkey vultures.







"The poet's primal voice is to pierce walls," summarizes my friend Margaret Randall in her book of essays "First Laugh." Nature knows no borders. Birds fly through countries. Bodies retain their cellular memory. We remember. We must speak the truth, our truth, to the world to allow healing.

Vistas await me...
wonderful new adventures.
The birds already know this.
Time to follow my inner instincts, migrations.
Balance with the Autumn Equinox in my beloved New Mexico.

Summer Solstice

I came to find light. From the northern land of clouds and rain, I followed my tug of intuition that set me off on this journey to New Mexico. A pilgrimage, or a sabbatical; I came to find clarity in a new landscape where the sky is a different shade of blue and light reflects more intensely. I have experienced more sun in the last three months than I would have in several Minnesota summers.

The last couple of weeks Albuquerque has been engulfed at night by smoke from the Arizona wildfires a couple of hundred miles away. Breathing is no longer taken for granted. The moon turned red.

It’s clearing out now and the days remain clear, the nights are full of stars. Riding back from Santa Fe in my new friend’s yellow convertible, I breathe -- I notice the big dipper hanging above us. I am finding my own sense of clarity within the wind, the dust and the clearing smoke.

I arrived here in March, just after the Spring Equinox, in the middle of one of the windiest windy seasons on record. I found out I am allergic to dust, and realized after a few weeks that I miss water, and rain, and endless green. It took me a couple of weeks to acclimate to the altitude. Minneapolis elevation is at 841 feet. Albuquerque is 5,000 feet. I came in on a whirlwind of hope , only knowing of five people who lived in the state, and only knowing one fairly well, my writing coach. I stirred up quite a bit of feelings being introduced to a new romantic interest that started very quick and intensely, and is now evolving into something I’m not as sure of. There are patterns and circles that flow and interconnect, kind of like fractals.

What did I expect when I came here? What type of journey did I think I would find? I look back to the reasons I wanted to move here and the fears I had on what was holding me back. The fear of how I would stay the same, in the same patterns if I didn’t make it happen. The fear of getting stuck. I wanted to move if I but only if I had the right conditions: if I could keep my friends, if I could make new ones, if I could grow and have new experiences. I wanted to move to save money, to have new places to explore on weekends, to jump-start my writing, and most of all, to challenge myself. I worked through all of my excuses with help from my Minneapolis community and a lot of exercises and workshops. I made the decision and made the move and set off on an exciting new adventure. Of course, things always take longer and cost more money than planned.

What I found was unexpected. Hot air balloons. The windy season. Romance. Volcanoes. Alien beer. Petroglyphs. Inner turmoil. Light. I chose to become an immigrant and to be uprooted. I have the independent, wandering spirit from my grandfather, who came to Minnesota from Sweden in 1901 at age 18, the only one in his family to leave the homeland. He came for new opportunities, and to get away from the Swedish-sponsored Lutheran church. He had sponsors and help for a new start and a new life. I am a native Minnesotan and although I have traveled quite a bit, I had always lived in the Twin Cities metro area. I wanted New Mexico as my new home and I have found a few ‘sponsors’ to help me. I also knew that whatever struggles I would have to deal with, the landscape would hold me. The landscape is what drew me here and what I continue to respect and learn from. The gorgeous Sandia Mountains fill my daily life. The volcanoes have their secret beauty. It is a terrible type of beauty where I am not in control. I have to listen to the voice of the land.

I am reading “Death Comes for the Archbishop” by Willa Cather, which was a gift to me from Tim’s parents. I had never read the classic and although I never thought much of the Catholic church and what they did to the Native Americans, Cather’s fictional rendering of Father Jean Marie Latour coming from France to the vast unexplored territory of New Mexico in the 1850’s portrays him as sympathetic and respectful. Latour learns from the unforgiving landscape and explores his own loneliness. “That country will drink up his youth and strength as it does the rain." Ah, yes, how appropriate. I am not a tourist anymore, I am here for the long haul. The landscape is testing my strength.

To give another example, here is an excerpt about the Bishop Latour on his way to visit his Native American friend Eusabio – “the ride back to Santa Fe was something under four hundred miles. The weather alternated between blinding sand-storms and brilliant sunlight. The sky was as full of motion and change as the desert beneath it was monotonous and still, -- and there was so much sky, more than at sea, more than anywhere else in the world. The plain was there, under one’s feet, but what one saw when one looked about was that brilliant blue world of stinging air and moving cloud. Even the mountains were mere ant-hills under it. Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky.”

Jean-Baptiste Lamy was the real-life French roman Catholic clergyman and the first Archbishop of Santa Fe that Cather’s novel is based on. His bronze statue is in front of the St. Francis Cathedral and he is buried under the sanctuary floor of the Basilica.

Personally, the land is my spiritual haven. I have moved from the 44^th latitude parallel to the 35^th latitude parallel. Albuquerque has 14.5 hours of daylight on the summer solstice, whereas Minneapolis has about 15. I lost a half hour of daylight but gained more sun. The Swedish midsummer is celebrated around the time of the summer solstice, with dancing around maypoles, bonfires and wearing crowns of wildflowers. Midsummer was thought to be one of the times of the year when magic was strongest and it was considered a good night to perform rituals to look into the future.

My will is sometimes tested with the quirky culture of Albuquerque (or Albuquirky as some call it). Getting my New Mexico driver’s license was easy enough, however I had to go through a week’s worth of paperwork and several trips with emissions and VIN doctors and MVP bureaucrats to get my New Mexico license plate. The political climate here can be depressing with a new Republican governor, the public schools are among the lowest rated in the country and the daily news reports endless drunk drivers with no treatment or no plans to get them off the road before they kill someone. Drug trafficking is in the schools and there are abandoned pet notices everywhere. In spite of all this, I am encouraged by the literary community here with a wonderful collaboration of poets and musicians. I have found a Monday evening open mic that is interesting and inspiring, and there are several weekly workshops and readings that give me options of ways to be connected and involved in the community. There are several independent, small presses here and a good University system. Every city has it’s down side, but Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Taos have some of the best artists in the country. I am here to take advantage and learn from that. I am already making the 50 minute drive to Santa Fe a weekend habit (or taking the Rail Runner), and Old Town Plaza is just a few minutes away. What I used to dream about is right outside my turquoise door. Last week I was writing in the O’Keeffe Museum for an evening workshop. I already have had a stream of visitors to my guest bedroom. My taste buds are happy too - who would have thought this Swedish girl would become addicted to green chile! I have learned to make it at home and put it on everything, including my new favorite, green chile mac and cheese.

I am writing – that is the main thing – new poems, new collaborations.

I continue to meet new friends and the Duke City is home for me. I felt that when I visited Minneapolis for a reading a few weeks ago and flew home. Albuquerque is home. When will I feel like a local? I feel it now, with my apartment, seeing friends, reading my work in front of others, going out to eat or on my daily walks with the gorgeous mountains. I have a routine and I’m settling in. I see the occasional road runner or the cute little lizards scampering across the patio. I mostly feel it learning what the land has to tell me. I am living my authentic self, or trying to. Here I am on the sage-brush desert edge of the world where I can breathe.

Rising to new adventures

Today I wake up to four hot air balloons rising, which I can see from my patio in my new apartment in Albuquerque. A good sign, since I am hoping to go ballooning Sunday morning. I treasure the invitation from my new friends, Randy and Diana, to be part of the adventure, and I am bringing along my new romantic interest, Tim, who has also never been ballooning. I took a leap of courage in my journey to come here without knowing what to expect and I am pleasantly surprised, or more appropriately, blown over, by the intensity of what is happening in my life. I have met a wonderful man, and I had to come all the way to Albuquerque to meet a fellow Minnesotan. We’ve known each other only a few days and it seems like weeks, or months, or a lifetime.

As I watch the balloons rise, I think of the role balloons have played in history. I read the book “Jules Verne: The Man Who Invented Tomorrow” by Peggy Teeters. The book practically fell off the shelf to prompt me to read it at the Albuquerque library last week and reminds me that I chose my name for my writing life and for curiosity and adventure. (Most of you know my birth name was Julie, but I legally changed it to Jules many years ago).

The legendary author Jules Verne writes a fictional account about balloon explorers on the “Victoria,” a passenger balloon scheduled to go across Africa from east to west following the trade winds. It’s three passengers were Dr. Samuel Ferguson, an English explorer, Joe Wilson, a faithful servant, and Dick Kennedy, a courageous Scotsman. They maneuvered the “Victoria” over the jungles of Africa where the local inhabitants thought she was a foreign god. She was moored on the top of a breadfruit tree so that she would be safe from attack by some of the people below. On another occasion, her trail rope becomes entangled in the tusks of an elephant that begins to race wildly over the terrain with the balloon in tow. Jules Verne couldn’t resist putting Victoria and her crew in the midst of a blinding rainstorm and had Dr. Ferguson battle to make her rise high above the clouds away from the flashes of lightning. At the end of the story, the three men finish the journey without the basket, clinging to the net of the sinking balloon.

Verne’s novel opens with a brief factual account of African exploration up to that time – this is 1862 – and the reader is promised the revealing of the source of the Nile, Lake Victoria. This is the manuscript for Jules Verne’s “Five Weeks in a Balloon” which was published in January 1863 (after over fifteen rejections) and was an immediate best-seller with adults and children and provided enough income for Jules to live off his writing and give up his jobs that allowed for no creativity. In fiction, the Victoria has a successful flight in spite of its heart-thumping moments. On the other hand, in real life, there was an international race going on to discover the source of the Nile, the longest river in the world. Africa was unknown to the Europeans of the time and Jules’ idea of having his fictional explorers find the source of the Nile granted him success.

The French explorer/photographer Felix Tournachono, better known in Paris as Nadar, had a giant balloon, named appropriately, “The Giant” and equipped it with double-decker bunks, a kitchen, and a darkroom. Nadar didn’t really believe that the balloon could succeed as a means of transportation and told Jules the only reason he was building the “Giant” was for the money and the publicity it would bring him so that he could construct a primitive kind of helicopter. Jules, however, kept on writing. Nader’s
“Giant” crashed in Hanover, Germany, nearly killing the adventurer and his wife.

Hot air balloons also helped the French war effort in the 1870 with Napoleon’s downfall and victory over the Germans. Over sixty balloons left the capital during the siege, with most of them landing in friendly territory carrying pigeons, dogs and letters. One balloon flew 600 miles to Konigsberg, Norway, while another got up to a speed of 95 mph. A German balloon and a French balloon (piloted by the Frenchman Nadar) had even engaged in an air battle – the first in world history. Nadar had shot the German balloon down.

Jules Verne would go on to write “Around the World in Eighty Days,” “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” and “Journey to the Center of the Earth.” Jules Verne passed away at the age of 77 on March 24, 1905. Over 5,000 people came to his funeral, including schoolchildren, soldiers, politicians, clergy, scientists and writers. Jules’ son Michel erected a monument on his gravesite two years later at the Le Madeleine Cemetery in France. I will have to put Jules Verne’s gravesite on my list of cemetery visits for my own future travels. Jules Verne is an inspiration to me as a writer. New Mexico balloons are inspiring, floating pieces of the imagination that can take me almost anywhere.

I am not going to be as adventurous as the “Victoria,” however! Randy and Diana’s balloon is named “Sky Candy,” very appropriate for bright skies and fun travels! We will lift off from a parking lot at 6:30 in the morning, float over the suburbs and the valleys and land a couple of hours later to a welcoming tailgate party. I am a virgin balloonist, and now, by lifting off the New Mexican soil into the one-of-a-kind blue sky, I am finding out what courage and adventure feels like. How rewarding it is to feel at home with new friends and new love, in a new landscape. I want to share my experiences with all my friends scattered in Minnesota and elsewhere. My past is grounded, my future is open, my present is rising with the balloons.