Red Letter Poem #149

 The Red Letters

 

 

In ancient Rome, feast days were indicated on the calendar by red letters.  To my mind, all poetry and art serves as a reminder that every day we wake together beneath the sun is a red-letter day.

 

                                                                                                          – Steven Ratiner

 

 

 

 

I am pleased to announce that Christopher Jane Corkery just received a nomination for this year’s Pushcart Prize for her poem "Painter on Scaffolding in Summer" which appeared as Red Letter #113.  The final selections for the yearly anthology of ‘Best of the Small Presses’ will be announced in May – and I know our Community of Voices will be wishing her luck.

 

 

 

 

 

Red Letter Poem #149

 

 

 

 

Today’s reddest of Red Letters is a little Valentine’s Day primer. 

 

Have you ever wondered where it came from – this ungainly symbol for love: two plump lobes tapering down to a point?  What substantial love-pledge, let alone marriage of true minds, could hope to balance upon such a precarious structure?  I think back to my grade school Valentine’s Days – red construction paper cut-outs pasted onto white doilies; and, of course, the lively trade of those candy Sweethearts, those sugar-fueled oracles.  But a quick glimpse inside an encyclopedia confirmed, even for a fourth grader, this design was nothing like that muscle beating ceaselessly in our chests.  It turns out that heart-shaped leaves – like the fig, ivy, waterlily – were often featured in medieval art and heraldry.  The ivy was intended to symbolize fidelity; did that start this icon on its path to being a universal emoji?

 

Further back, a host of ancient philosophers believed the heart was the emotional center of our being, the seat of the soul.  And physicians such as Galen, the second-century ‘father of medicine’, described the heart as a three-chambered organ shaped like a pine cone.  Thus, the first known depiction in art of that iconic love-gesture was in the 13^th century French manuscript the Roman de la Poire (Romance of the Pear), in which a young man holds out his vaguely pine cone-shaped heart as an offering for his lady love.  Saint Valentine (we mustn’t forget that 3^rd century Roman martyr – patron saint of courtly love, but also of epilepsy and beekeeping) would certainly smile upon this expression. . .

 

. . .As well he might on Cathie Desjardin’s much more biological take on the valentine.  Before I comment further, let’s enjoy her poem:

 

 

EKG

 

 

We’re together in the kitchen when you say

you talked to your new doctor,

the one who ordered up an EKG

because he said he’d heard a skip, a stutter.

 

Most likely it’s within a normal range.

What’s normal in our undercover pumps?

Part mystery fist, blossom, cage?

Once I saw a tattooed heart clumped

 

on a woman’s bare back: not a valentine

but a thick muscle in full spurt,

aortic wad inked in red and blue lines.

She said she loved our corporeal hearts,

 

the beauty in anatomy. Anyway,

you tell me, my doctor scanned the blips

and says I’m fine. Let’s look, I say.

So you hoist your shirt up from your hips,

 

I place a palm curved to fit

among your soft gray curling furze,

spider fingers scrying for a tidal beat.

Why had I never sensed a miss

 

when I so love to lie with you,

nest my palm to feel the thump there?

I touch it now, rueful with what I know:               

ways I thought I could protect, repair—

 

mistaken. But a new grasp of lubadub:

all unnoticed, our deep rhythms change,

and in what we claim as Hub of Love

imperfect is our normal range.

 

 

      ––Cathie Desjardins

 

 

The heart in Cathie’s lyric is neither a symbol nor an abstraction, but the actual muscle beating inside her husband’s ribcage.  Isn’t it lovely that her sprung rhythms and off-rhymes conjure both the regularity of form as well as its imperfections – much like her beloved’s EKG?  In fact, don’t we love such things all the more – knowing they are fragile and impermanent?  Cathie – my predecessor as Arlington’s Laureate – is the author of two poetry collections; the most recent, Buddha in the Garden (from Tasora Press) is, like her surname, filled with the life of the garden and the way the mind finds sanctuary there.  Her work has appeared in a number of publications including The Christian Science Monitor, The Boston Globe, Cognoscenti – WBUR’s online magazine, and Pulse – Voices from the Heart of Medicine (where “EKG” first appeared.)  She is a lifelong literacy educator who has taught in elementary and high schools; at Lesley, Suffolk and Boston Universities; and UMass/Boston and UMass/Dartmouth, and more – helping students to find the pulse of their own poetic resources.

 

 

 

The Red Letters 3.0

 

* If you would like to receive these poems every Friday in your own in-box – or would like to write in with comments or submissions – send correspondence to:

steven.arlingtonlaureate@gmail.com

 

 

* To learn more about the origins of the Red Letter Project, check out an essay I wrote for Arrowsmith Magazine:

https://www.arrowsmithpress.com/community-of-voices

 

and the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

http://dougholder.blogspot.com

 

* For updates and announcements about Red Letter projects and poetry readings, please follow me on Twitter          

@StevenRatiner