 |
| A Real Spanish Dove |
What has happened to the length of a week?? It used to be seven days between Fridays, but now it seems like every few days - sometimes every few blinks - it's another Friday, and I've missed an early posting of something on The Drift Record for Poetry Friday.
Well today I'll keep it short (not easy for me): Click here to see one of my poems called "Far from Home." It appears online as part of Greg Pincus's Poetry Month series, 30 Poets/30 Days - which is part of Greg's blog Gotta Book. Greg invited thirty poets to give him an unpublished poem to use for his celebration of National Poetry Month - definitely go to his blog to check out some of the fine poems he chose.
My poem was written in Seville - or was it Granada? - where a dove cooed for hours outside our hotel room. I guess old age has something to do with this blurring of days and places? One thing for sure: I can't keep blaming the blur on jet lag. It's in me permanently now - which is why I must be thinking so often of the importance of slowing down.
I'll post the poem here, too, now that Greg has new poems up to finish out the week.
Far from Home
From my room this morning I could hear
the the cu-cu-ru-ing of a Spanish dove…
this little bird calling me is why I love
a long trip, when I know I’m near
creatures I never thought I’d meet:
a French dog barking, a Welsh cow mooing,
a Czech hen clucking, a Spanish dove cooing –
even a river rippling in a language new to me!
Now I see kids on the bridge, playing –
I wonder what they’re saying?
 |
| An Imaginary Spanish Dove - Wish It Were Real.... |
Poetry Friday this week is being posted by The Book Aunt - go there to see what other people have posted!
honestly, julies, when i first traveled abroad (in my late 30s, far too late) i thought i was crazy for thinking the rivers sounded different. the nekar and seine were so distinct, it was as if they had absorbed the languages of those who lived beside them.
ReplyDeletei've had that thought tucked away for so long now. thanks for dislodging it from the crazy place.
You are SO right, David - I don't know the Nekar (Germany?) but the Seine definitely speaks French, and the Tiber speaks Italian. The Rio Darro in Granada and the Guadalquiver in Seville speak Spanish - they even know how to trill their r's!!
ReplyDeleteI love this conversation! I'm with you, Julie and David. Every river I've met has spoken in its own dialect and it's always been unique to its banks and the landscape beyond.
ReplyDeleteI'll be listening more carefully as I travel now!
ReplyDeletesheesh! i just came back for a visit and saw i called you "julies," plural. perhaps in the royal? sorry 'bout that.
ReplyDeletethe nekar is indeed in germany, a feeder for the rhine that babbles its way through heidelberg, the city where i first spoke with it. for a german city with a sizable irish ex-pat crowd it had an unusual lilt to it's voice.
and thinking about it some more, i'm wondering if "the lorelei" comes from the rhine, and its root word, lurln, means murmur. hmmm.
Not to worry, David - I kind of liked the "julies" because that's often my condition - several conflicting me's battling it out for supremacy at any given moment. Besides, some of my friends - good friends - refer to me as "Jules."
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of a river's name emerging from the sound it makes! Whatcom County in NW Washington State took its name from the Nooksack word meaning "noisy water." Wouldn't it be nice if we could conjure up the origin of river names when we invoke them? Who thinks "Wild Onions" anymore when they say the Abenaki word "Winooski" (the river flowing through Montpelier, VT?)
oh, now i SO have to go down to the winooski when i'm there in july and have a little talk about those onions!
ReplyDelete