Writing Spaces

Thoughts on the wind . . . 

"Why the Egyptian, Arabic, Abyssinian, Choctaw?  Well, what

tongue does the wind talk?  What nationality is a storm?  What country do rains come from?  What color is lightning?  Where does thunder go when it dies?"

—Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

image:  Schedelsche Weltchronik - Kosmologie

Milk

My long short-story "Milk," set mostly in and nearby the Cathedral close in Durham, England, has just been published in Minerva Rising Issue 18:  Reinvention, Resolution, Recreation.  

Despite her utter lack of resolution and self-confidence, after her archaeologist boyfriend leaves her for a Roman archaeobiologist, Virginia takes the path of least resistance to weather through, then by way of her love of cooking and her caring nature reinvents herself and recreates her life.  Here's an excerpt from near the beginning:

“It’s no use crying over spilled milk,” he had often quoted his no-nonsense Aunt Hattie, never married, who’d moved back to Santa Fe into his childhood house to take care of Joey and his two older sisters after their parents’ death.  Joey had readily embraced Hattie's dictum, not being one to regret, to look back.  Odd for someone studying the ancient past, some might argue, but he saw archaeology and art history as forwards progress, a necessary advancement of knowledge for the good of humankind.

         Though she was one to regret anything and everything, Virginia would much rather not be crying over it in public—and especially not in the spice aisle at the mega-Safeway on El Camino over a tin of bay leaves, exactly like the one she’d bought to make jambalaya with sausages and red peppers and chicken thighs for Joey’s 40^th birthday.

Contagious Magic

It makes me happy to announce the publication of my book of poems, Contagious Magic:  Collected Poems.

"Always light-gathering, these poems move back and forth among the places that have been essential to the poet's life—New Mexico and the southwest, old Roman vestiges in northern Italy, a longtime home next to a synagogue in northern California, the color-drenched French countryside of artist Pierre Bonnard.  The magic of the title is carried by spices and pigments, water and birds, bright strings of turquoise and branches of pine.  As traveler, word-peddler, and celebrant of joie de vivre, the poet's quest has been to gather luminous ingredients wherever they are found."

Written over a large span of my life, and every so often published in journals, some of them, the poems were gathered with others and ordered differently for a Continuing Studies class at Stanford several years ago, then put back in a drawer.  When the threat of the Coronavirus came upon us in early March, I decided I wanted most of all to spend my hours (final if they should be) getting my favorite poems of the collection out into the world, as a kind of memoir.

My preface explains the title (timely, but coincidental):

James Frazer, British anthropologist and author 
of The Golden Bough, said that contagious magic 
has to do with the associations between things.  "Things that have been either in physical contact
or in spatial or temporal association with other 
things retain a connection after they are separated."  (Phillips Stevens, Jr., Skeptical Inquirer, Nov/Dec 2001) 

         The Hawaiian religion calls it aka, these bonds or shadow cords connecting us elsewhere, animating our being from however far away. 

         My life has been rich with resonances of this sort.  Thunder rumbling in purple canyons holding the ruins of Anasazi dwellings; the evening air holding the memory of temple bells.  Words carry magic.  For me, each poem is an incantation, a small spell marrying sage maybe to red ochre and chile pods,
 contagious in the sense of
passing on chance findings of quixotic joy, incendiary light.

Happy launching, little book.  Sail true.  Like the lyrics of Giuseppe Verdi's heartbreaking chorus, that speaks of the lovely, lost homeland, of times gone by that are dear and irrecoverable, in these perilous times, "Fly, my thoughts, on wings of gold."

Contagious Magic can be ordered from Barnes and Noble, Amazon (on Kindle too), from Bookshop Santa Cruz, or from your favorite local bookstore.

Haiku Challenge, Week Four

My final week's responses to the #30DaysOfHaikuChallenge (see week one for details).  Thewildwords.com/haiku|NicoleGulotta

22  made you laugh

mountain goats roaming 

Welsh streets—past the tattoo shop,

the solicitors

23   seasonal shifts

just this afternoon

a splendid purple iris

took us by surprise

sparrows flown elsewhere,

and the coastal rocks empty

of pelicans still

24  pile of papers

bills — ticket refunds —

a Cezanne postcard never 

sent — last year's flax seeds

ticket refunds, last

year's birthday card to answer,

obituary

limone, pesca,

nocciola—gelatos

in an old story

25  tea or coffee

well-loved coffee mug—

its lip chipped years ago now, 

but still soothing mine 

26  lighting a candle

orange, palo santo:

a steady flame to cleanse my

writing space of ghosts

smoked birch and amber:

a small prayer, like burning sage

for clarity, health

sandalwood and myrrh:

fragrant as smudging sage to

clear a house of ghosts

Cedarwood, lighted

to clarify my thinking,

consecrate my words

27  on the road

dog ears fly in bliss

from the car window, heeding

asphalt whispers, wind

dog ears streaming from

the open window, hearing

what, that I can't hear? 

28  breath

Each breath outside brims

with birdsong, iris petals,

softly soughing pine.

Inspiration is 

literally "breathing in."

I breathe deep, deeper.

gauzy lengths of sky,

silver-shot scraps of ocean—

breathing it all in

the stooped old man feeds

ducklings—calls them, breath whistling,

like the Pied Piper

so hard to breathe, through

these protective layers:  no

clean, heartening air 

                                                                                                                                                                                                             

29  on your street

the sound of bagpipes

gone by now, where the piper

walked past to cheer us

our poppy patch draws

bees, small dogs, those needing cheer,

an artist's easel

30  through the window  

a rake on gravel

smoothing, soothing, evening

roughed pathways gently

corrugated roof

rusted, as in Hilo rains,

hibiscus haunted

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Waterlily