Path of Fire



  Path of Fire

  Christa Polkinhorn

  eBook edition published by Bookworm Press

  Copyright 2010 by Christa Polkinhorn

  www.christa-polkinhorn.com

  Printed edition published by Finishing Line Press, 2002.

  Copyright 2002 by Christa Polkinhorn

  Cover image: Morgue Pictures

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  In Memory of my sister, Rosmarie Spiegel-Umiker

  * * * * *

  Winter in Castaneda

  Climbing the stairs

  from the cellar to the room

  with the tile floor,

  eight months later,

  after the pain has softened,

  after the ashes have been scattered

  on the rock, after driving past the

  snowy fields of Saint Gotthard,

  we feel your presence

  fill the spaces between our bodies.

  Not yet understanding the full meaning

  of this merging, of your hands

  entwined in the leaves of plants,

  your scent lingering in the

  cedar closet, your smile

  in the candle flame,

  your voice trailing the crackling

  of logs in the fireplace,

  a sound so delicate,

  we dare not move

  as not to disturb it.

  With each breath we take

  the silent words into our hearts

  and choose to believe in the

  here and now

  of all that was, before you left us.

  In Memoriam

  Back then, we tried once again

  to cram a year’s worth of feelings

  into one week,

  letting our thoughts float

  in the vast stillness.

  Before us mountain peaks

  drained away into the summer night.

  Now your face is tucked in a frame

  on the shrine next to the flowers

  and the candle I light every night.

  It looks my way with a warm

  or mischievous smile,

  depending on the way the light falls.

  Your sanctuary lies in my heart

  in little heaps of joy and sorrow.

  I think of you often,

  of the times we sat together

  gazing at the lit church

  on the hill above Santa Maria,

  our bodies suffused in the evening glow,

  you, leaning back into the

  lime-green sofa pillow, and I

  leaning into you.

  Expatriates

  Fall edges towards us

  with earth colors and

  mist-drenched mornings.

  A feeling of fear

  begins to spread in

  the hearts of people

  gazing at the palm trees

  in California, the poppy-fields

  of Tuscany, the snow-covered

  peaks of the Alps,

  an anxiousness about

  things undone, dreams drowned in the

  struggle of surviving another year

  translating texts from foreign languages

  into something called native,

  driving taxi cabs in smog-filled cities.

 

  We speak with a smile and a tear

  falling onto the lush grass of one home,

  the hot sand of another.

  Dreams are filled with voices:

  Wie geht’s? Va bene? How are you?

  Which one shall we answer?

  We could cut our love in two

  and send one half east, the other west

  staying in the middle

  breathing in, breathing out.

  Home

  With Christmas looming once again

  I drag gifts across town

  board a plane heading for

  what used to be home

  always looking for that

  Hello dear

  so glad to see you

  Old smells

  the pulsing of familiar blood

  some sense of lasting love

  in a town of faces growing faint with time

  friends scattered in Los Angeles

  Zurich

  Oakland

  Santa Fe

  Baby boots kick

  a happy squeal and quick kiss

  eyes sparkle

  then languish

  flexible

  fuzzy

  relationships

  This aerodynamic tumbling

  leaves stretch-marks

  in my heart

  Here I am

  still searching the earth

  for a home

  The Mirror

  I gaze into my mother’s eyes

  above my father’s weak chin,

  my aunt’s breasts and my sister’s

  bushy pubic hair. Slightly curved

  beneath the knees, my father’s

  hairy legs, feet too small

  to form a solid base.

  The features of my family

  bunched into one

  unharmonious whole.

  Faces and limbs overlap, as in a

  doubly exposed photograph.

  My hand touches

  the cold glass that cuts through

  illusion, and leaves me

  on the other side of myself

  stranded and

  sick for home.

  My Name

  I wanted them to call me Anna.

  It is my mother‘s name.

  The musty scent in my

  childhood bedroom

  where I sleep today

  when visiting

  conjures up my old nightmares.

  Our cozy home transforms into a

  slaughterhouse where feelings are

  carved with clean sharp knives.

  Pressing my Raggedy Ann doll with

  wool oozing from its ripped

  belly against my chest,

  I watch my mother weep away

  her unlived dreams.

  My father stands at my bed with a

  glass of grape juice.

  It is a bad dream, he says

  stroking my hair

  just a bad dream,

  but I know the truth

  I am my mother‘s mother

  cradling her in my arms.

  Now I hammer my life like a

  stubborn silversmith

  finally forging the growing pain

  under my breastbone.

  At home, they call me by my own name now.

  Absences

  I raise my arms towards the sky

  but the hands aren’t mine

  the man with straight black hair

  walks with my legs

  somebody’s blue eyes

  stare at me from the mirror

  I write a check

  the ink fades as I

  sign my name

  through the window spotted with rain drops

  I see an angel with clipped wings


  wash my heart in the brook

  next to the pinewood house

  in the haze of early morning

  I remember the touch of the

  squirrel’s tongue licking my finger

  mistaking it for a nut

  I try to find myself in the first breath

  of day but see only pieces of colored

  glass tossed carelessly at my doorsteps

  the answering machine spits back

  voices of the unknown

  after brushing my teeth I dress in

  absences and search for the key to

  unlock the memory of a pungent kiss

  trapped in the back of my skull

  Florence

  Wedged between suitcases and coats,

  a mother piles thin slices of

  mortadella on top of white bread.

  A father with curly hair offers me

  a glass of Chianti.

  As the train shoots into the tunnel

  at the north end of Saint Gotthard,

  I close my eyes and listen to my heart beat.

  A man with honey skin and black eyes

  sits on the steps to the platform bed and

  brushes across my forehead.

  Now he bends his knees, his palms skim my

  breasts, and now he folds into the shade of the drapes.

  The bells of the Duomo toll for late mass.

  In the balmy air filled with the smell

  of garlic and olive oil and the vibration of

  voices, I lift my glass, as a

  mocking smile cracks through the

  steel-blue eyes of the man

  who is still my husband.

  The wine tastes of blood and acid.

  Barely seeing anything, I turn

  my head towards the darkening sky.

  Monks in flowing robes, wind-tossed and

  secretive, walk up the steps to the Duomo.

  Above a shooting star

  falls into its loneliness, and

  I fall into mine.

  Dream

  Sometimes I too

  want my name

  on the title page of someone’s life,

  want to bask in the

  warmth of a smile,

  burst like a dew-soaked

  seed in the sun.

  Is it true that happiness

  hangs by the thread of a dream?

  Only in dreams

  do I fall into the

  dark well of your eyes.

  When the alarm shrieks

  I wake, holding

  a naked heart

  in my fist.

  Man in Black Cape

  (For Harry)

  Sitting next to the fire place

  in front of a clean sheet of paper

  waiting to be filled with something

  worth preserving,

  I think of the times we had to raise

  the drunk leaning against the door

  of the loft in the Bowery in New York City

  where we lived when we were young.

  I often wondered what attracted you to the

  seedy parts of life,

  I, born in the country of Calvin, where

  cleanliness reigned supreme and you could

  eat off the streets.

  Now, with both of us greying and apart

  as dreams fade and loss becomes daily routine,

  clean may signify

  empty.

  I listen to the whispering of heart-shaped leaves

  of trees whose names I keep forgetting

  holding on to tenderness, hoping,

  still hoping that

  what we may have missed, will be somewhere,

  waiting for Spring,

  waiting to bloom again

  for others, perhaps,

  for us.

  Epiphany Next to the Trash Can

  I pretend I know something about life.

  I study the names of trees saying them out loud

  sycamore, birch, southern ash, magnolia,

  tasting each vowel and consonant with my tongue

  so that the day I lose my balance and

  slide down the soft clay hill with my

  eyes towards the sky,

  I would have something to say

  to the sun touching my face, to the

  moon with its cool smile,

  I would lift my arms

  and shout some glorious idea

  into the vast expanse of heaven.

  This morning, as I open the door

  of an empty refrigerator and

  think of the unpaid tax bill,

  I give in to my mundane life

  and toss the dreams

  with the rest of the trash

  knowing that if I opened

  my heart wide enough,

  I would need no illusions,

  the failures would fly

  away on the wings of dark birds.

  It’s the first time in years

  I feel like praying.

  Failed Escape

  (After the Flood in Los Angeles in 1991)

  After the latest storm, when whole mountains

  lost their footing and buried

  Jaguars and Hyundais alike,

  when a homeless man plunged

  down the gorge, along with a shopping cart and

  dirty diapers, and up on the hill

  a judge slid out of bed, nightgown and all,

  and died buried in the mud,

  when down at the beach, the remains of

  somebody’s life were washed ashore—

  a crushed milk carton, a shoe with its tongue

  cut out, a baseball bat next to a doll with

  bleach-blond hair and a bashed-in eye—

  I watched a pelican on the rotten branch of a tree

  hoist its heavy beak into the air.

  Perhaps it too was waiting for a drift which

  would lift it up to the almost

  perfect disk of the moon far away from

  the pain of ordinary life.

  But on their first landing there,

  the astronauts found a cold and

  lifeless world.

  From up high, only earth,

  luscious and messy,

  felt like home.

  Zenobia

  (A Spring Ghazal for my Friend)

  She looks slightly skewed

  behind the faded sweater

  but her eyes shine. The grey

  walls of the hospital disappear,

  the snow muffles the noises

  of the city. Before us

  trees with frosted winter-leaves,

  the sound of a twig snapping.

  Over coffee and sweets I tell her

  the legend of the Amazons who

  cut off their right breast so they could

  better hold the bow and shoot

  the arrow with precision, but my friend

  did not become a warrior by choice.

  On the day of the Spring equinox

  she will battle her second chemo shot.

  I plant tulips and try to

  grow a good luck bamboo and

  pray for healthy dew-soaked seeds

  to sprout through hardened winter soil.

  In the space between two thoughts, two

  breaths, at that moment when nothing

  is decided yet, miracles can occur and so

  there is hope for all of us.

  (Septima Zenobia or Bat Zabbai, an Arabian queen in the 3rd century A.D. who was not only an accomplished warrior and huntress but spoke five languages and wrote a history of her country at a time when most people were illiterate (David A. Jones, Women Warriors, Brassey's, 1997.)

  Women at Fifty

  (After “Men at Forty” by Donald Justice)

  If they wear silk or fine wool

  they may attract the glan
ces of

  grey-haired gentlemen.

  Young boys, seeing their mother’s eyes,

  may open doors for them through which

  they enter and depart alone.

  In the reflection of a shop window, they

  glimpse perhaps the locks of a young girl.

  Memories flow abundantly,

  smiles turn into belly laughs.

  As they take off their reading glasses and

  lift their squinting eyes towards the horizon,

  they see in the sun-bloodied sky

  something of their own.

  Now their empty wombs serve as

  bellows fanning the smouldering fires of creation.

  Soft hands grip the envil firmly and

  with each stroke they

  temper and shape their dreams.

  Gratitude

  A day

  when my heart

  is calm

  when I don’t feel

  its flickering beat

  behind me

  a birch tree

  its leaves collecting

  the last sunrays

  before me

  a swallow

  bathes in the

  approaching

  dawn

  Homage to Laotzu

  Steam rises from the hospital roof

  curling upward like an

  offering to the sky

  after the storm that

  broke the backs of the

  long-stemmed gladiolas

  calms down

  a hail of flower petals

  settles on the concrete

  as I stand at the end of

  my oblong shadow

  trying to float my arms

  like clouds

  the sun pours a rainbow

  into the oil slick

  next to the battered car

  Mother

  nearing ninety winds the old clock

  pulling the chains dangling

  from the wooden case.

  Time stored in her flesh and bones

  seeps through her hands.

  I listen to each shallow breath,

  feel the faint trembling of her arm

  tucked into the curve of mine,

  as we climb the last steep hill to the store

  on those muted winter days

  which follow each other like dull pearls

  strung on the thread of life.

  The late afternoon sun casts

  our thin shapes among the

  shadows of birches and pines

  coated with hoarfrost.

  In the coffee shop she softens bites of

  crusty bread and dips them into hot chocolate.

  A drop falls on the face of Madonna

  staring blue-eyed and beige from the

  cover of Mademoiselle.

  At dusk the waitress switches on the light.

  My mother’s face,

  white as a moon,

  refracts from the window-pane.

  I peer past her into the growing

  darkness outside.

  It’s not death I fear,

  I am afraid of being the last one alive.

  Sunday Morning in Santa Monica

  A bus stops,

  doors open and close,

  then roars on, trailing

  a cloud of black smoke.

  A young man leans his head

  against the window pane.

  Next to a shopping cart

  stuffed with plastic bags, a woman

  sits on the park bench

  hunched over

  her head almost touching her knees.

  I feel the moist air float by my cheeks.

  An old man with a

  green lopping hat stops in front of

  Callahan’s coffee shop.

  He sucks on his cigar

  and puffs smoke rings

  delicately

  towards the sky.

  Years ago,

  I buried my father’s ashes

  in a cemetery near Zurich.

  Today, I bless

  my beautiful lonely life.

  Path of Fire

  (For my Father)

  We skipped church and

  went into the woods instead.

  As the sun streamed through the trees

  tossing patches of light

  on the ground,

  we gathered twigs and branches

  which he stacked with care,

  kindling wood first

  big logs on top.

  He lit the fire,

  holding the match

  into the middle of the pile.

  It has to burn from the inside, he said.

  The first flames leapt into the air,

  then died down

  hissing and spitting

  and turned into a steady glow.

  We roasted shriveled

  winter apples,

  peeled the scorched

  skin with a knife.

  Busy eating, I let the deer

  graze safely in the

  echo of my young girl’s voice.

  The photo with the guilded edges

  shows him behind a mug

  overflowing with beer.

  He faded in steps,

  fingers trembling

  as he tried to light his cigar,

  hiking boots shined and unused,

  dreams about death,

  coffin,

  urn.

  He left me his watch,

  his rebellious mind, his

  love of wine, of the

  fire I now build on my own,

  always trying to remember

  to light it in the middle,

  spread the embers evenly

  and let it burn

  slow, hot and steady.

  Acknowledgements

  Earlier versions of some of these poems appeared previously as follows:

  Voices: The Path of Fire (under the title "My Father"), Issue 4, 1993, The Cape Rock: The Mirror, Spring 1993.

  I would like to express my gratitude to my family and friends in Switzerland and the United States who have supported and inspired me in my work as a poet. A special thank you goes to the following people: Harry Polkinhorn, Marianne Schiess, and Marianna Kehrwecker for their help and sensitive insights, my poetry teachers Jack Grapes and Austin Straus, and last but not least my fellow poets Ann Braeff, Gwynne Garfinkle, and Mary Striegel.

  About the author

  Born and raised in Switzerland, Christa Polkinhorn has always had the desire to explore the world outside of her beautiful but tiny country. She traveled in Europe, China, Japan as well as South America. Now, she lives and works as writer and translator in southern California. Her interest in foreign cultures