DEBORAH LEIPZIGER is an author, poet, and professor. Her chapbook, Flower Map, was published by Finishing Line Press (2013). In 2014, her poem “Written on Skin” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Born in Brazil, Ms. Leipziger is the author of several books on human rights and sustainability. Her poems have been published in Salamander, Voices Israel, POESY, Wilderness House Review, Ibbetson Street, and the Muddy River Poetry Review. http://flowermap.net/
Farewelling
For so long
I have held on so tightly.
Now I hold all the possibilities
of farewell.
I wish farewell to winter,
and welcome the geese returning.
I release the poems,
erase the messages.
I teach my daughters to leave.
—
Anew
“I’m beginning to know myself. I don’t exist.”
— Fernando Pessoa
Each day I make myself anew.
Today I am quiet.
Tremulous.
Each person I meet changes me.
Each word I ponder over
Makes its way into my bloodstream.
Each day I exist myself into being.
—
Ode to the full moon rising
Over the April night you preside
Rising smoky over the Charles River
Having absorbed the light of the magnolias opening
You carry the white of the sails
Into the night
—
Cassiopeia
From the opening in my tent I see the constellations,
the smokiness of the Milky Way. I see the great distances
of my journey. This tapestry scrolls expansive
its weft and warp tessellating.
Cassiopeia: I see your Heart Nebula, your Soul
Nebula, 100 light years across. I see your White Rose
Cluster. I find your daughter Andromeda’s galaxy.
I follow this path of stars,
until I am the map, constellating.
—
Paint your house bright —
deep coral
daffodil yellow
swimming pool blue,
so that when I venture out to sea
You
remain
visible
—
The end of the ending
Please return
the paintings
I let you
hang,
the one from
my aunt
who has since
passed away
Give me back
the aleph
— the symbol
of beginningness
—
Gifts
Why is it harder sometimes to receive
than to give?
How does the felled tree
still blossom?
How does the storm-tossed branch
rest,
in the tree
from which it was severed?
Is there generosity in receiving?
—
Chemistry
My me and your you
So alike, so alien
Two chemicals unable to combine
Inert
Something toxic in their introduction
Yet mesmerizing
Magnetic
There was never an us
—
Giving it Away
We’re in Central Park, at a rally for disarmament.
The year is 1982. Keith Haring is giving away posters.
Black and white. A baby in a mushroom cloud.
He gives away 20,000 posters, despite having little to live on.
Perhaps this is what it means to be an artist, to be an activist
to be in love with a world still becoming:
To be generous
To give it away
—
Islands of Salt
Near the crest
of the Andes
a salt crust
touches the horizon –
still it rests.
The blue lake limpid,
pure.
Flamingoes breed here
in the Salar de Uyuni,
Enveloped by mountains,
in this corner
of
Bolivia.
—
Ode to a Golden Beet
I peel it
hot from the oven
revealing a sunset of crimson red
setting in golden yellow
Lines like pathways —
on this tiny
beating
heart
—
After the Storm
I inspect the damage
The daffodils have survived
Even their onion skin layer is intact
The bluebells still ring
Tulips blazing
The wind and cold did not stop the azalea–
Only the forsythia is ragged
Its color fading.
Spring seems unstoppable
Irrevocable.
—
Darwin’s Orchid
We evolve together
in the way of orchids
and their pollinators –
Bats, bees, moths,
hummingbirds,
each in the dance
of co-evolution.
Darwin wondered:
Why were there night-blooming
orchids?
Moths
appear, at night.
The orchid’s pollinia–
a circle of pollen —
seeks
a certain pollinator.
On the Isle of Reunion
the bee orchid lures male
bees.
The orchid’s iridescent
wing patterns
resemble the female bee
and create allomones—
which mimic the scent
of female bees.
Darwin wondered:
How could the star shaped orchid
with a nectary a foot long
be pollinated.
By whom?
One hundred and fifty years later
an answer is found:
the hawkmoth, reaches into the white
star
of the orchid.
—
A Poem for Isabella
Hang the nasturtium from the halls
Let it cascade into the courtyard
Its tangerine blossoms
Billowing
Let the green leaves fall
Like Rapunzel’s hair
Let it be lovely
—
Water drops in pools
creating pearls in the cave
in Lechuguilla
Liminal
I live in the liminal
In the space between stanzas
Between sleeping and waking
In the interregnum between dreams
I live in the becoming
In beginningness
—
From the center
of the reservoir
the cormorant speaks to me:
“From the stillness
Speak your truth.”
—
The faces of morning
Yours are the faces of morning
entering my room
waking me to the day
Breakfast together
pink grapefruit
Love Crunch
hair still wet
I pause to watch you
descending the stairs
crossing our street
launched
We face the morning
—
My Day, Your Night
Will
the sun of my day
rise
in your
night?
Will the
waves from my ocean
wash
over
your desert?
Will
the colors of my prism
blaze
in
your dark life?
Or
Will
the seaweed from your ocean
entangle
my
fish?
Will
the ice storm of your galaxy
freeze
my
day?
Will the
stars of your night
guide
my
way?
—
Welcome silence
gently descending
like a curtain
Welcome quiet
engulfing me
in waves
Welcome solitude
bathing me
in serenity
Welcome stars
—
flame
her body spills purple
emergent
alive
amidst the glare
she regains her flame
enveloped in a cloud of words,
a murmuring of swallows,
the universe moves through her
—
Valeska
Three strands of pearls adorn her neck
A dress of blue, velvet
A gentle face atop a long neck
Greets me
Framed in ivory
She has travelled with me
From Rio, to Philadelphia and London
To the Hague and Boston
My great grandmother Valeska
Watching me, watch her
Our eyes lock
She, a mother of three daughters
I, a mother of three girls
Who resemble her
Will my great granddaughters wonder about me?
Will they find this poem?
—
The thing about blue bells
Is that they come
upon you
suddenly—
a shady patch of the hill,
sweeps downward
and there they are
half obscured
a carpet of cobalt blue,
lavender if there is sun.
I recall my first view
of blue bells,
unexpected
as our friendship.
—
What I wish for is a life of beginning
Two blue jays flew
out of the flowering tree
shaking its yellow blossoms.
Oh, do not call it an empty nest,
rather — say
a tree full of new branches,
forests upon forests
—
In the Valley of the Moon
seven camels
carry seven of us
our caravan
pulling time
across the desert
wind carves
patterns
on the wadi
—
Holderness
Look what the tide has brought in:
Starfish
thousands of stars
until the beach is a night sky
of constellations
Just three degrees
colder
and the ocean has cast
them out,
stranded
Engorged with ice
they summon us
like a message in a bottle,
they talk to us
from Holderness
—
Greet yourself
In your thousand other forms
As you count the hidden tide and travel
Back home
-Hafiz
Open yourself to the continents
which reside in you
Embrace the colliding
the shifting and the clouding over
Greet the coral dawning
the cobalt twilighting
Bathe in the forest canopy
with its filtered beams of light, its moss
Greet the tidal,
capture the shells
Pollinate the tulips
germinating and fighting for sunlight
Shelter all that is emergent
wishing to be born
Greet yourself
each color of your prism
I know you are tired
As you count the hidden tide and travel
Back home
Greet yourself
In your thousand other forms
As you count the hidden tide and travel
Back home
—
Daughters: A Love Story
The first sound I hear
is you
singing
this morning
once
I begin
to listen
—
Ark in the Field
— after Joyce Peseroff
I fill the Ark with all the seeds I can find
To make a place for germination.
The Ark calls to me
With its silences,
From which resounds the music of rain.
I can hear the nascent words
In this nest of lost things.
What needs to emerge
Will appear.