Winter Poem

I am
Where the dark and the light meet
Where color is born
The prism
The point through which
white bends then divides,
spreading through the blanket of night

— Ellen A. Wilkin

Winter Letter 2019/2020

Darkness and snow descend;
The Clock on the Mantelpiece
Has nothing to recommend

-- W. H. Auden, Advent

I sit in the front room clutching a mug of Earl Grey and basking in the radiance of the Christmas tree. Its white lights and silver, gold, and multi-colored ornaments push back the advancing dusk. As the light fades, the candles in the window begin to glow, and both they and the white lights on the tree are reflected in the front and back windows. In the front yard, the blue lights on the evergreens snap on, and looking out, I see an overlay of white on blue. And now the solar lights on the pine at the back window fade in. The reflections multiply: outdoor lights reflecting back on themselves and onto each other and playing over the reflections of the indoor tree and the candles. I am pleased and my imagination runs away. I am the warder of the dark and the watcher over the last beacon at the edge of night!

The first hints of Winter came early this year with a snowstorm and heavy gray days over Thanksgiving. I nestled down into layers of cotton and fleece and wrote. While I’m working on a project, I struggle for inspiration, and gray, snow-choked days make it harder. I have successfully wooed it a time or two, but have more often suffered total failure. (Don’t try Spider Solitaire. Does. Not. Work.) Despite all my experience chasing inspiration over the years, I don’t know exactly what it is. Writers write about it. Musicians play and sing to it. Artists draw and paint and sculpt until they find it. Actors become someone else in search of it. When it comes – and there is no guarantee it arrives at all – it is not to be corralled. It does not follow a structure or schedule. It is or is not. Some folks seem to have it at their finger tips whenever they need it. Some of us don’t. In my experience, when inspiration comes it feels like being struck by lighting. And like lightening, it reveals something. Maybe a memory I’d forgotten or some understanding that I didn’t know I had. Inspiration can feel like a sudden collision of ideas that were unrelated but now have a relationship. A feeling that I am part of the world washes over me. And everything is right.

Beginning at the winter solstice, I try to capture the essence of Christmas to find inspiration. "Christmas" for me starts with a feeling of security and love that I had as a child fostered by the love and generosity of my parents. It then morphs into a tradition completely enacted and controlled by me. Some aspects are the same: Caroling, lights, baking, eating meat-heavy meals and sweets, erecting a tree with presents underneath. I stare into the red, green, blue, and gold lights on the mantelpiece and let my eyes go out of focus so the colors blur into a magical tapestry, just as I would as a child. (I had perfected the eye blur at Saint Mary's primary school during Friday morning mass. I would stare at the altar and let my eye muscles relax. The world became a wash of color and a hint of shape.) But forty-eight years later, my adult sensibilities come to bear on the process. I make wreaths from discarded evergreen branches, pine cones, and used red ribbons. I invite friends and family to make merry. I love the sugar-and-chocolate aroma of cookies baking and the earthy citrus spice taste of mulled-wine-soaked orange slices. I want to hear the tinkling of bells, the brass and boom and trill of instruments, and voices raised in song. It is a grand composition.

As an adult I love the reaction others sometimes have to my winter composition. For example, new neighbor CJ pointed us out to his children as we walked by and said “those are the folks with the blue lights.” Lonny, our neighbor for twenty years now, stopped by the house while walking his dog and, as she nosed into the bushes I had just decorated, said in his Texas drawl, “Yep. That’s the house with the blue lights, Peaches.” Susan, next door, commented as she walked by with her dog that I was "too ambitious." I told her I could stop anytime I wanted to. That's when it hit me: I was making myself happy. The whole point of this process was to find delight in my creativity and to connect with others. Perhaps that's inspiration in a nutshell: a feeling of connection, both to ourselves and to others. The completion of a circuit – in the brain, in the soul, in the body. Then we light up from inside. And then that brilliance spills into the outside world.

The final aspect of my winter composition is this: reaching out to all of you. Hope you find the inspiration to do wonderful and creative things for yourself and for others this year.

The Bells

The bells
They chopped the air with unfamiliar waves of sound
The physical banging of metal on metal
so unlike the digital trill of
the carillon that last was played from the Sather tower
They rang across the flats
and pulsed toward the orange ribbons of sulfured atmosphere
The vibration in my chest was a second heartbeat
I dared not believe.

I set down the bag of groceries on the nearest bench
and stood in the park, listening
I hung in the space between joy and sorrow
Hoping
we had all waited for a long time
And now the indelicate campanile
Sounded up the hills,
down the streets of Berkley
then echoed out across the water
I caught a movement out the corner of my eye
A group of people had formed
Standing at the crest of the hill, at the entrance to the park
as if at a focal point
They laughed and raised their arms to hug each other in shared surprise
One silver-haired man gave me a thumb's up and handed me his phone
A large headline displayed the words: Peace Talks Announced!

I hadn't known I'd held my breath until it rushed out
I felt my body rise as more air rushed in
I returned the man his phone and sat on the bench next to the groceries,
my plan for dinner the last thing on my mind
We had done it, well, they had done it —
They had reached a cease fire that we the people could never orchestrate
They - the savage powers that took over the earth's institutions
to wage war against each other
had begun to talk
they had remembered their humanity —
that they had mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, even children--
a memory held still in some cell in their power-hungry bodies
after years of demolition
it was not the end — no
it was a beginning
And Like the rusty bells in the Sather Tower
Long unused, metallic and strange
Human voices rang again
with a promise of reason
and an intonation of joy

— Ellen A. Wilkin

If You Can’t Find a Friend

You know you are lost on
the open freeway
when you start tapping the
steering wheel to the beat
“If you can’t find a friend
You still got the radio-o”
It’s all about a car
with stereo speakers
And driving along with
Nanci Griffith singing her
gratitude to Loretta Lynn.

With the wind whipping your hair
the car drifts a bit
You twitch the wheel
And keep on,
Now singing your own thanks
for the songs the women wrote
about choosing Freedom
and getting up and leaving
Watching the falling-down
two-story frame house
recede in the rear view mirror
and, along with it,
the tiny drunken figure
sleeping it off on the couch.

— Ellen A. Wilkin
Remembering hitting the highway with “Listen to the Radio” by Nanci Griffith on the stereo

From Austin City Limits - Late 1980s

Weird

Weird

How weird is it to be
awakened
in the middle of the
night
By an alien
craft
that descends
in the shape of a
white ceramic-coated
box
it’s lights glowing
through a
fog
at the top
and its engines
bubbling and cooing
like the trunk of Parnell’s
1964 Chevrolet Malibu
(will I be just a
scorch mark by
morning)?

So weird that it took
until the bright
light
of morning for me to
understand:
this was no shiny
extra terrestrial space ship
but the refrigerator
in the cottage
in which I’m staying
whose lights were
the diffusion of
LEDs
from the Wi-Fi router
sitting on top—
Due to the canny placement
of a paper towel roll
between me and
those bright pinpoints—
and whose circuits told it
that moisture was collecting—
Time to defrost!
Bubble! Coo!

And how weird is it that
Digital wireless technology—
science fiction only a few
decades ago—
and the invention of the defrost
cycle—
almost a hundred years back now—
led to a 1950s sci-fi dream
of faster-than-light ships
crossing the universe
just to see me?

—Ellen A. Wilkin

I Was Writer in Residence at the Gloucester Writer's Center

I am delighted and a little bit startled by my time as Writer in Residence at the Gloucester Writers Center. It was a period of deep writing for me as well as an introduction to the city of Gloucester, MA: its landscape and its inhabitants. I have met many of the visitors to the center—from the actual “center” to the “fringe.” It was an honor to meet Henry Ferrini my first day there, and on subsequent visits we had charming and unguarded conversations. All the while, I was aware that I was a stranger to the town and the recipient of a free place to stay in a character of a town at the edge of the sea. And all due to the generosity of Henry, Amanda Cook, Dan Duffy, and the other members of the Gloucester Writers Center board and community. As the days went by, the cast of characters increased and grew more colorful but remained generous and welcoming. Thanks to them all, but especial thanks to Amanda for setting up the reading and being my champion although we had just met.

I wrote several poems while ensconced in Vincent Ferrini’s old cottage. Look for some of them to be posted here on this blog.

Calling Inspiration

A nice red Jump dress (Titanic inspiration) back view Photo by ~ggvic~ [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]

I saw you down the street
I caught a glimpse of your red hair
The glint in your eye
Then you were swallowed up in the crowd
and you were gone

Something about the texture of
layered limestone on a bed of red sand
in Ojo Caliente
sends a jolt through me
but the moment passes
like an electric field
through me
but neglects to burn the equivalent
language into my brain

I caught the edge of your red silk dress
just then
and felt the soft weave
I hung on as you danced over the water
and soared over mountain peaks
but at 10,000 feet
I lost my grip
and now I am
10,000 feet down
Where was it to? The rest of that flight?
Can I take the next plane
and catch you up
Apparently all flights are full
and I must sag back down to the ground
in this nameless spot on which I have
landed.

Ellen A.Wilkin