The Red Letters

  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

 

 

 

 

 

 

Flashback Friday:

Red Letter Poem #8

 

 

 

That Blue

 

One day after the eternal winter,

the scilla gush out of the ground

in a tide that laps
at the sidewalk.  Cold wind

rakes them into ripples
so they make a lake on the lawn.

 

This blue shimmering with violet

makes the sky seem pale.
You can find it across centuries

in beads, ribbons, velvet,

 

concocted on the palettes

of Gauguin and Van Gogh,

favored by the Fauves,

those wild beasts of art.

 

A blue that makes you pause

as if listening for music;

maybe you could
wish on it

for something

you’d forgotten

you wanted.

 

 

                ––Cathie Desjardins

     

 

 

Cathie Desjardins: it’s always pleased me that her name and her passionate interest coincide.  Her poetry has often been of the gardens, and no more so than in her most recent collection Buddha in the Garden issued by Tasora Press.  It uses the year’s path through the seasons as the archetypal journey within all of our lives, the vines of beauty and mortality braided inextricably.  When I asked her how this became so important to her, she recalls Michael Pollan’s idea: “The garden suggests there might be a place where we can meet nature halfway”––and that she does: the garden as classroom where life-lessons are acquired with earth-stained hands; garden as laboratory where commitment and patience are tested; place of poetic retreat where one’s avid eye and attentive mind often blossom into mystery.  After one of the most brutal winters in recent memory, what sheer delight this week to receive a few unseasonably warm days, melting the snow drifts, and exposing the wet earth.  Looking out my window now, I detect the first green leaf-tips of early spring in my wife’s garden, signaling what feels like a rescue.  Can the poet’s precious scilla be far behind?  And so I thought I’d offer a second viewing of Cathie’s poem from the earliest days of the Red Letter Project’s history––especially now, when next week will mark the beginning of our seventh year of publication.

 

A lifelong literacy teacher and writing specialist, Cathie’s taught in many elementary and secondary schools in Massachusetts, as well as colleges and writing centers, helping the power of language to take root in thousands of students.  Her work has been published in numerous journals and newspapers, such as The Boston Globe, Pulse, The Christian Science Monitor, and WBUR’s Cognoscenti online magazine.  And, on a more personal note, she was my predecessor as Arlington’s Poet Laureate, and continues to share her vision of poetry as essential in community life.  I have admired the clear images and colloquial tone of voice within her poetry.  Even in simplicity, a gentle music emerges; describing the scilla’s blue, she writes how the wind “rakes them into ripples/ so they make a lake on the lawn.”  The contrast between those swelling L’s and the counterpoint of sharp K’s––it feels like a duet scored, perhaps, for cello and flute.  This quiet attention to what is happening around us does, indeed, make me remember what is most desired and too often overlooked in the daily hubbub.  I have enjoyed the bounty within Cathie’s first two poetry collections and look forward to a new manuscript, Floral Constancy, that is slowly working its way toward an eventual blossoming. 

 

 

 

The Red Letters

 

* 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

 

* The weekly installment is also available at

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 BlueSky

@stevenratiner.bsky.social

and on Twitter          

@StevenRatiner

 

And visit the Red Letter archives at: https://StevenRatiner.com/category/red-letters/