THE SEEKER ASCENDS
THE SEEKER ASCENDS
poems by
Merle Nudelman
INANNA Publications and Education Inc.
Toronto, Canada
Copyright © 2018 Merle Nudelman
Except for the use of short passages for review purposes, no part of this book may be reproduced, in part or in whole, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically or mechanically, including photocopying, recording, or any information or storage retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for its publishing program. The publisher is also grateful for the financial assistance received from the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.
Cover artwork: Mary Lou Payzant, Fear of Falling #4, 2014, Acrylic on canvas, 18 x 14 inches. Photo: John Oughton.
Cover design: Val Fullard
eBook: tikaebooks.com
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Nudelman, Merle, author
The seeker ascends / Merle Nudelman.
(Inanna poetry & fiction series)
Poems.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77133-521-8 (softcover).— ISBN 978-1-77133-522-5 (epub).—
ISBN 978-1-77133-523-2 (Kindle).— ISBN 978-1-77133-524-9 (pdf)
I. Title. II. Series: Inanna poetry and fiction series
PS8577.U34S44 2018 C811’.6 C2018-901539-X
C2018-901540-3
Printed and bound in Canada
Inanna Publications and Education Inc.
210 Founders College, York University
4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3 Canada
Telephone: (416) 736–5356 Fax (416) 736–5765
Email: [email protected] Website: www.inanna.ca
For Michael,
in eternal loving memory
Contents
THIS ROOFLESS HOUSE
The Verge
Loss
Ode to a Birch
The Endless Once
After that, the Garden
Autumnal
ART IN TRUTH
Picasso at 90
The Telling Stream
Sensation and the Sublime
Woman in the Negative
The Innocence of Change
Enfeeblement Conspires
Within the Behemoth a Dulcet Turning
The Enigma of Shells
WHAT LINGERS
Terrors
Old Business
Tea Party Twist
Waiting to Search Holocaust Records of my Parents’ Enslavement
Coronary Red
The spherical motion of the May rake
Mechanics of Metamorphosis
The Start of Yellow
THE CIRCULAR LINEAR
Life Dream
Verisimilitude
Stepping Away from Then
The Seeker Ascends
Elevation
Land/scapes
Notes
Acknowledgements
That time was like never, and like always.
So we go there, where nothing is waiting;
we find everything waiting there.
—Pablo Neruda
This Roofless House
The Verge
Skipping to school she ponders the puzzle —
triangular fruit falling at her feet,
petals onto lids, lips, and into her ears
fragrant whispers about essence:
the integer’s power, fulcrum’s scale.
Chanting its name thrice then thrice and thrice,
she’s diamond-blue, webbed in air thick with 3s.
Saffron molecules whirl dervish-like,
implant membranes. Blood’s mirror radiates
mesmerized atoms out into the ether —
triple-braided strands encircling.
Her life’s cipher doubled to infinity.
Beyond contradiction, lies, and illusion loops the authentic.
For now, a bewildered heaven.
In the third month she was born, he in the ninth; they met
on the ninth of the twelfth. Wed in the sixth, she bore
two sons: she-note for the male trio.
Mystics foretell three brings wisdom as we climb
the sides of life’s triangle — to the tip, to oneness.
The cosmic numeral challenges:
create with what you hold and rejoice in the cryptic.
So it is told. So it is believed. Behold its form:
the female figure bearing life, a labyrinth,
eyes intuiting connection.
Thrice, ten years wash over the land. Sun moves, sky rains,
stars burn in the firmament. The moon reflects upon
strings of prayer beads in sets of thirty-three ––
Amen’s numeric peer.
Devotion to the power of three three three.
Still, at thirty-three her son dies.
Loss
i.
When the one she prizes
more than breath,
more than her sacred self,
when this prismatic being
plunges perilously ill,
crumbles on cancerous boulders below,
the world greys
and she a stranger in it —
an entity that appears woman
but is merely afterimage.
Quaking in the void
where he once stood
her bones weep
for all he was
and was to be
her heart (a monstrous, distorted thing)
bursts to break, to end
the shuddering into another day.
ii.
There is mercy.
In dreamy visions he comes.
Robust and wise
he comforts his mother,
offers her courage
and she clings
to the golden haze.
iii.
Stage IV, they say, and the woman
vows to save him.
She scours the aisles,
dismisses plums, guava, dragonfruit,
cups a mangosteen
pulsing in her palm.
This potent fruit
she brings to him
with rich berries, purple grapes.
Awake, asleep she seeks
solutions, combinations —
minerals, meridians, prayer —
an elixir to right
the riddle of mutated cells.
Down her throat slithers the python.
More metal than flesh, more do than feel
the woman is fearless,
indestructible.
Son, heal her son.
This is the thing and everything.
She kills the python.
iv.
Armed with Olympic dedication
he accepts all challenges
braves the gamut —
torturous treatments, tried and trial.
Ever the athlete, he calibrates,
charges into the fray —
v.
Believing
in the healing peaks
they are pink balloons
on a roller coaster’s rise
dark dominoes
tossed and toppled
when tumors progress.
vi.
What now?
The oncologist shrugs.
There are no comparables.
Such steel.
His trajectory flies
off the charts.
Trust and fear
shuffle.
vii.
He did not trip or tumble.
He did not slip then slide.
He did not stand at the edge of that vast cliff
recklessly bent.
In truth, he wanted to dance,
his children firm in his arms.
To skate until the ice melted.
To celebrate daybreak
and its morning.
viii.
Pasty sky licks the seam
sealing the beams
dense as lead
mashing him into, onto
this mucky earth.
Sweat from the bones
of that faceless sky
clings to thick
phone wire,
skews the spikes
raining upon him
flailing
in the storm.
Out of fog’s density
a cry —
Here, only here
the seam relents.
But the mist mutes,
refutes,
and he is lost.
ix.
His bedroom door dangles
from its frame
leaving space
malleable
while the lidless box stares
at things
best left unnamed —
this roofless house
its mad valve
speckling arms red
mother on her knees
rotating the bloated
his rusted possibilities
doing the math wrong
as her mind bleeds through the doorway
crouches inside the quivery box
screams at December’s claws
unhinging a son’s heart.
Ode to a Birch
In height
and breadth
you dwarf us —
column of textured bark
branches steadying sky
jade leaves
chameleons
on your helmet
gleaming galactic
You our sentinel
firm at the gate
a slender birch
canopy full
as geisha’s hair
you shade us
from sorrow
refresh us
with the laughter
of your reach
even
in February’s
noxious white
unflinching
you bear
the trickling ice
insidious snow
burrowing
beneath
raw bark
while the earth
dims, furrows
and you
remain true
day after
punishing day
remain our birch
profound
in your silence
determined
to bud again
in summer
fullness
before fall’s
stumbling
foliage and twigs
gather
air’s fury
But lightning stabs
your hollow
that takes the cut
slowly
straightens
braces for storms’
intent
to do
and they do
strike again
open fissures
blight leaves
distort
your brilliant crown
emptied
of scattering squirrels
the romp and swish
Bird-gossip abounds
surrounds you
shift
shifting
within the grey
in black December
till the night of days
when your herculean will
is ambushed
and tested
no more.
The Endless Once
In then out again
through prayer’s spaces,
see how the lamp spins the maze —
the pupil, the eye,
heads touching,
palms on small crowns.
Blessings for them, tremulous scrolls,
for hallowed lights remembered.
Parents sing the words in their hands –
grant me understanding so that I may live.
They watch mother filming, squeeze
close to father sitting on the bed.
Fans wand him as he holds a prayer book:
his children for a blessing.
Moonlit comet
he traces time,
petalled arms shouldering.
He sent signs and wonders into your midst
near the locked box, morphine inside,
near the oxygen where days lay
fine on night’s surfaces.
The lamp warms and they slip
inside this moment
paled rose on the infinite table
and their waves are stilled.
After that, the Garden
Weeks you stoop in a cape that hangs
in rigid roughness galling eyes.
At your sides empty shells,
prospects tangled at your feet.
Palms pressing we face the wall
that parts to our intent, reveals
bursts of zinnias beside willows.
We pause at the bench.
The cape drops as he approaches —
our daylight.
Rising we reach for his hands,
fold into him
and he dispels
your strand of tears.
Autumnal
They sit by the shore meditating on Chödron —
the breath of joy, breath of anguish,
tendrils between them.
Floating inward they rise
ruddy in clotted air.
Mallard’s dance tenders
maples flushed gold,
the heft of this quiet
on their shoulders.
Pristine hush.
Glacial lake pine primal stone —
the tableau of it all
woven into oneness —
you, me
this sunset, distant land
there yet here
as well.
Art in Truth
Picasso at 90
Now he burns blue, spits at the scythe and hood,
paints cruel age, the impotence —
phallic pipes, the artist’s severed hand,
fecund woman scorning the besotted old man.
Stained grey & splayed his fingers grip the brush,
jab at the muted palette — fanned lines
swift and uncluttered, duplicity
discarded as his final years wrestle
across the voids. Simplicity
strips statements to black and white —
the female other sprawled
, her open sex
staring. She//he. Icon draws his fright,
brush-strokes the model. Life pared
to the passion of art. Body/bar/chair.
The Telling Stream
for Richard B. Wright
He binds them without knot, twine or even splice,
binds the agreeable words one to the other and others
like the elements of water they cleave in storied delight
while each continues to expound:
sprung leaves on a rushing stream, unbound.
Sensation and the Sublime
L’Orangerie, Paris
Here, the oval nave —
chaste walls,
crystal-domed moons.
Rooted in alabaster
she’s a sail seeking.
Silence reverberates.
Light-misted canvasses
exhale, fill the room’s orb.
In each: the pond, a stipple —
lilies served by willows,
day’s tilt and hue.
Novice,
she enters the garden,
breeze’s spectrum,
listens for reflections.
Woman in the Negative
Framed by the window,
luminous as a Degas
the dancer plaits
ill-starred light,
invokes Fortuna
fable-shaped.
What about her face:
painted by dusk,
spaces lingering
between ecru lines?
Vaporous canvas —
jeté in pastels.
The Innocence of Change
for Blue Vase and Flowers by Judith Davidson-Palmer
Chrysanthemums yawn
languidly in cool light —
stalks taut yet
swan-neck supple,
leaves mudra-cupped to catch
sheer August sun
trickling past prim purples,
brassy, sassy rose,
down long-legged stems
stuffed
into the generous mouth
blue and unpuckered.
Blooms bleat
in the late noon
about their floral life,
trust in glazed clay
to nourish, close the cut
where roots once were,
to hold the huddling
safe to September.
Backs sag,
mums droop
and some heads
drop to the table
The Seeker Ascends Page 1
