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 #300
Poem for My Mother––
Cococino National Forest, Arizona
Dizzy at the edge
of mountains
red rocks
mimic the sunrise
ochre wildflowers
all over the meadow floor
If you were here
it would burn for you
Juniper berries
scatter lavender light
over a scarlet path
before this lava-sculpted
underworld
of sandstone and limestone
If you were here
the stones would glow
dizzy at the edge
of mountains
––Ruth Chad
As a child, I loved it, the solitary thrill it offered: spinning in circles, creating a dizzying cerebral whirlpool. Head back, wide-eyed, as the sky became unmoored and wild––I remember laughing until I’d collapse. As the years have passed––the heart bearing the inevitable wear and tear of life’s tumultuous passages––I seem to enjoy such vertiginous pursuits far less. And so I was intrigued by the way Ruth Chad’s little elegy is all about making the head swim, the heart bob perilously in this eddy of grief––all so she might reclaim a vision of her mother Rosalie from memory’s underworld. Born and raised in Montreal, Quebec, Ruth eventually had the opportunity to travel much more widely than her mother. Rosalie did take a vicarious pleasure in hearing about her daughter’s travels, places she’d never see firsthand. Mother and daughter spoke on the phone daily––and what more speaks to the intensity of that bond? Even years after her mother’s death, Ruth continues to raise her mother up from memory’s dim recesses, as if she could still show her one more glimpse of this stunning existence. And so it is here, near Sedona, exploring Coconino National Forest––a vast national preserve approaching two million acres, whose ecosystems range from low desert to ponderosa pine forests to the snow-topped alpine peaks. The poet’s couplets daub an Impressionist sketch of the scenery: “red rocks/ mimic the sunrise// ochre wildflowers/ all over the meadow floor.” But Ruth ups the emotional ante with the following lines: “If you were here/ it would burn for you”––bringing in a range of imaginative possibilities. Is this act of burning an emblem of ecstasy? Destruction? Of course, later on, when the mention of “underworld” enters the poem, we’re led (if we hadn’t already arrived there) to the Demeter/Persephone myth. We cannot avoid the vision of a fiery Hades from which our evergreen memory must be rescued.
If you’ve ever visited this part of our country, you’ll easily recognize that “scarlet path/ before this lava-sculpted// underworld/ of sandstone and limestone.” It’s not so great a stretch of the imagination to picture Rosalie captive by a kind of Hades of forgetfulness, that only living recollection can oppose. Except, in this updated myth, the roles are reversed: it’s the daughter/Persephone figure who must rescue Demeter from the dark underworld, to return spring and beauty to our existence. “If you were here/ the stones would glow// dizzy at the edge/of mountains”––and indeed, grief can feel as vast and daunting as mammoth Cococino––and yet love does not retreat from the task. The poem concludes as it began––the momentum of one circle leading into the next; we can almost imagine the refrain instigating another verse and another. There is a kind of reclamation taking place in poems like this one, a cyclical vision in which all our lives are turning. Of course, a poem does not repudiate death, but it does strengthen us for the living path ahead of us.
As Ruth explained to me, she has spent decades as both a clinical psychologist and a poet––“with poetry as a central guiding force in my life and work.” She’s the author of two collections: a chapbook, The Sound of Angels; and the more recent In the Absence of Birds––both issued by Cervena Barva Press. Ruth has published work in numerous journals, including Aurorean, Constellations, Ibbetson Street, and the Lily Poetry Review, earning a Pushcart nomination. There is a directness, a simplicity in a poem like “Poem for My Mother”––but because the poet eschews embellishment and allows the heart to lead, she can still make our heads spin, just a bit.
The Red Letters
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