This is a very special April for me, and a very special first poem for this 2014 edition of National Poetry Month. Tomorrow, Saturday, April 5th, I am getting married to my best friend, soul mate, partner, and fiancee, Samantha.
Ours has been a long road with many obstacles, detours, and diversions to finally arrive at where we are going to be on this certain April day.
I wrote a poem for the occasion. Actually, I wrote it for the poetry group to which I belong called 52, which is challenging me to write a poem each week during the year. We decided to print the poem on the back of the program for the wedding (see photo).
Poet Jo Bell (whose work I will feature later in the month) started group 52 and supplies most of the prompts for this virtual poetry workshop that numbers over 500 members worldwide. (You can find the prompts here: 52.) One week, the prompt was to write about Journeys. It was the perfect prompt to get me thinking about how we got here.
Here is my poem “Our Journey”:
How did we get here?
We say it all began with a yes,
But, really, it all began
With an across-the-room
Magnetism, with a searing
Feeling every time I tried to look away.
As if, there was something I had to see,
That only you could show me
And that I didn’t know you had.
What was it? You’ve shown it
To me almost every day since.
A fabric rent and become whole again,
A mystery with a resolution
That surprises us, every time.
A face as if seen through glass,
Scratched or etched
To a fine filigreed, subtle design.
No, no, that’s not it.
It’s more like glass that’s been glazed
With a pale, soapy film,
Which, once it is rubbed off,
Is clearer than the glass itself.
The two of us on separate, nearly parallel paths,
Not knowing we were looking for each other.
So many times, our paths nearly crossed,
But didn’t. Near misses we can only attribute to –
To what? Some kind of cruel,
But beautiful joke played by the Fates?
Nevertheless, here we are,
Together at last or again or finally.
On a journey together that results in a walk
Together down another path
On this certain April day.
–Scott Edward Anderson
Winslow Homer, Masterworks, and My Poem “Bermudiana”
May 21, 2013
Inland Water by Winslow Homer
We’ve just returned from a remarkable trip to Bermuda, where Samantha and I got engaged, and, frankly, we fell in love with the place.
The colors, the scents, the sounds, and the magical experiences we had — a bit like Alice in her Wonderland, actually, just took us deeper and deeper.
One such experience was meeting Tom Butterfield and Elise Outerbridge of the Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art, which has as part of its mission the repatriation of works created by world renowned artists in Bermuda.
When we were there, Tom was hanging a show of Brooklyn artist Ogden Pleissner’s watercolors painted at St. George’s on the far eastern part of the country.
He took us down into the archives to see Georgia O’Keefe’s charcoal of a banyan tree, and Winslow Homer’s “Inland Water,” which was painted not far from where we were staying in Warwick Parish.
Samantha challenged me to write poetry inspired by Bermuda — not easy to do after a month of writing a poem-a-day during the month of April. But when we got home, my notes proved to have some gems.
Here is the first that has emerged,
“Bermudiana”
Light refracts off turquoise waters,
But “turquoise waters” sounds so trite
And cliché, until you see it’s true.
Not since Indonesia have I seen such a color.
Then there’s the colorful pastel houses
Of yellow and sea green,
Sage, russet, the occasional purple,
The coral pink ferry stops –
All with whitewashed limestone roofs,
Stepped and sculpted to channel and capture
Rain; the islands’ only source of fresh water.
These islands are awash with color–
Flowers from the tiny, purple-blue Bermudiana
To the brilliant red hubris of Chinese hibiscus,
Shrimp plant, with its shriveled crustacean-hued
Flowers stacked along the stalk,
And morning glories, a soft purple
Bruise against green skin–
Light is texture here, which is perhaps
Precisely why painters, especially
Watercolourists, have been so inspired
By this land- and seascape.
The island across the way from us
Was captured by Winslow Homer,
In the painting we saw at Masterworks.
The perfume of the air, frangipani
(Or was it something else?),
Which scents the towels during our stay.
We find ourselves exploring
All over Bermuda, drinking it in,
With our Dark ‘n’ Stormies.
We will leave a part of ourselves
Here, as we take back memories
Of being transported to the beginning
Of our beautiful engagement.
What a place for a proposal;
What a place to conjure
using all our senses,
and all of our sensibilities.
Scott Edward Anderson
Scott Edward Anderson's Poetry Blog 