Poetry Rituals
by Whitney Vale
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“[poetry is] the aggregate of instances” ~Robert Graves
We writers are superstitious. Or, is it just me? My desk is littered with a variety of lidded soy candles. I type this with one finger resting on a resin elephant-headed Ganesha, remover of obstacles. I nod at the hand-painted icon of the archangel Uriel, prompter of the creative spark, igniter of the word. Next to him, a flat river rock with a painted feather across its smooth surface encourages risk, soaring, and leaping. A small heart-shaped stone from the gravel drive of a restored monastery in Sienna inspires perspective and a heart-centered awareness of my history. I built an altar to my deceased parents with fire and earth in its DNA. I massed lines of poetry and prayer as I renewed my grief and made my choices. What do I include in this specific writing? What do I see beyond the frame? What do I exclude? I think every poem is an altar. Altar means a gift offered up to the gods. Every word I write is an attempt to cull meaning from memory and experience, to choreograph an expression of love upon the page. Music and feathers and matcha tea, gods and angels open my imagination. Sacrifice to the Great Gods is the Root Word of Altar,
and I am cast low before this making. I gather your shadows and your sweets. Marigolds scattered in a circle. Cats stare at a wall. My attention trembles between death and life. A tatty photograph leans against a chipped Madonna. You were my great gods. Your fledgling bodies behind the pictured bar, caught in the early months of marriage, now fixed in flat graves. Fresher than a cut lime, your pale faces greet the present moment. You toast the future. I walk the circumference of mourning. Mom, prophecies hidden in your eyes, you warned me poetry is more than pretty words. Years taught me agreement. I place adjectives in a terra-cotta saucer, strike a match, stand the spent lucifer in a thumb-sized clay pot bought on my first excursion to a thrift store. You opened the door. Dad, fit in your Navy uniform, your steady gaze finds me leaning forward into the past. I trace your faded face and images fountain: you building a fence, riding a horse; your fetal curling in a hospital bed. We are sometimes graced by longing answered. At the feeder, two mated cardinals alight red wings and brown great gods singing spirits touching down. |
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Whitney Vale, MFA Creative Nonfiction from Ashland University. Poetry includes the chapbook, Journey with the Ferryman (Finishing Line Press) and poems in Gyroscope Review: The Crone Issue, Harpy Hybrid Review, Prospectus: A Literary Offering, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Quartet and RockPaperPoem. Prose forthcoming in The Palisades Review, and the anthologies Awakenings (ELJ Editions,) and The 2023 Writer’s Block Anthology (Hydra Publications.) She has also been a finalist for the Joy Harjo award, Barry Lopez award, and Minerva Rising’s memoir award.
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