creative ramblings & reverie

Monday, September 25, 2017

Writing Spaces



"Gentlemen,
     Regarding the recent rejection slip you sent me.  I think there must have been a misunderstanding.  What I really wanted was for you to publish my story, and send me fifty thousand dollars.
     Didn't you realize that?"

—Snoopy, and Charles Schulz


Grace

The elder with the walker who
has talked to us about the turtle eggs
visits the swan, late afternoon:
his favorite friend, his self-appointed charge. 

One, all careless grace,
the other clumsy and conspicuously careful,
come to grace

the slow, excruciating way around.

—Christie

Tuesday, September 19, 2017

Writing Spaces





image:  Bench with Roses

On the Bookshelf

On the bookshelf,
Shorebirds
Santi
and Sherlock Holmes—
three guides

into the unknown

and then
the flopeared flannel rabbit
my painted teacup
the terracotta artist pen
to see me safely through

another day

—Christie

Monday, August 21, 2017

Writing Spaces






image:  vintage photo

Persistence

an African basket
full of green beads,
the broken strands
confided to it
months ago, forgotten
there, let go

but coiled in
the mindful darkness,
in the way of sleeping
animals or seeds,
luster abides

—Christie

Tuesday, August 8, 2017

Writing Spaces


One of Matisse's women reading—but what?  What writer gets to occupy that Matisse space?

Guacamole

The surest thing
I've ever done—

ripe avocado
     skin rough and pit silky, fitting the palm
bright lemon
     stinging just a little in a cut finger
sea salt
a clove of garlic
onion and tomato
crushed red chile, seeds and pods
time
     to breathe
time
     to become

and then the glazed blue bowl
     textured like avocado skin
yielding its alchemy.

No measuring,
just practice, taste,
this ritual I've followed
almost all my life

that always brings
a kind of clarity
I'd forget otherwise

and gives me back myself
my Santa Fe childhood
those gatherings of friends in later years
     on Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay
that hillside in Mallorca, where after
deliberating words all day
with other writers
we'd have gin and tonic
little grilled peppers
and guacamole
while the sun went down below us
in that distant sea

strange and always familiar

—Christie

Thursday, August 3, 2017

Writing Spaces



From one of my collage notebooks . . .

Instead of Housecleaning

Instead of housecleaning
it helps to think of it
as visiting the things I love—
painted Italian candlestick
San Ildefonso pot
my paleography collage
with bits of a Larousse
binoculars
cottonwood drum
the alabaster jar
from the hilltown
of the Etruscans
where I walked
with mad dogs
in the noontime sun—
my long-ago
peregrinations
down to this
dreamy circling
of the threadbare cloth,
this unheroic
shooing off of dust.


—Christie