Red Letter Poem #181

 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

 

 

 

 

 

 

Red Letter Poem #181

 

 

 

 

 

Sycamore

 

 

The sycamore cannot stretch as it grows

It splits its skin, shedding scales,

Leaving a mottled bark, taupe over cream.

 

The pond in today’s downpour is a boiling eye

With a brow of tumbled down briar.

 

Inside, I press myself into books like a flower, my day’s faltering chronicle.

 

While outside the dimensional world nests in the tree’s hollow trunk.

 

Let me break if I must, so that I might rise

From the dormant landscape of charred purple and muted gold.

Open-crowned, naked and pale, thirsty for rivers, rooted, unbound.

 

 

––CD Collins

 

 

Objective correlative.  T. S. Eliot coined the term to describe “a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion” that the poet hopes to evoke in the reader.  Where metaphor might simply compare an object to some other thing or feeling, Eliot is arguing that the objective correlative embodies another state of being, takes the reader inside its emotional and psychic unfolding.  When CD Collins first sent me her poem “Sycamore”, I didn’t just think it was an example of this concept, it instantly transported me back to my first autumn in Cambridge when, decades ago, I moved here from California.  I remember walking along Memorial Drive beside the Charles River, bordered by lines of stately sycamore.  There is a certain pale greenish light surrounding these trees that feels otherworldly; and the mottled bark conveys a sense of both visual drama and tremendous vulnerability.  I clearly recall the beautiful loneliness of that autumn––feel it now decades later when I pass beneath these trees––and sensed its presence right from the first lines of this evocative poem.

 

CD is also a New England transplant, having moved here from her Kentucky home.  Because I know that she is not only a poet but a storyteller, fiction writer, and musician, it would not surprise me if she was quite familiar with the diverse roles the sycamore tree plays in the Bible as well as a host of world religions and cultures.  To the pharaonic Egyptians, the tree was associated with a trio of goddesses (one of which, Hathor, was even given the title of "Lady of the Sycamore".)  Mummies were often entombed in cases made from its wood.  The ancient Greeks and Persians considered it the most beautiful of trees and planted them everywhere.  The sycamore makes frequent literary appearances, associated with figures like the awe- (and war-) inspiring Helen of Troy, as well as Hercules, Dionysus, and Apollo himself.  To many Native American tribes, it’s thought to offer protection against negative energies and malevolent spirits.  In the Celtic world, the sycamore is a symbol of wisdom and spiritual guidance.  All this is to say that the varieties of sycamore around the globe clearly convey a deep sense of mystery to their human neighbors.  I find hints of this divine presence in CD’s poem coupled with the mortal fragility of all those humans dreaming of the divine.

 

And so, not wanting to interfere with your own emotional intuition, I decided to place my commentary after you’ve had your own time with today’s poem.  But now I’ll say: look at those “shedding scales”; the pond’s “boiling eye”; the “day’s faltering chronicle”––and you’ll see how the poem is charged with that mythic energy Joseph Campbell describes so well in books like The Power of Myth – the universality of the oral tradition that links cultures across the planet into "mankind's one great story."  When a poet or storyteller is most acutely attuned to what is passing around them, their words may attain some of that universal energy.  I believe CD’s poem possesses just that and, entranced by its musical intensities, I find myself thirsting for underground waters that will remind me of where I stand––especially now, when the whole world seems to quake, bereft of peace.

 

 

 

 

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