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
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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 gl
ances 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
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