(Brazilian Pepper Tree/Florida Holly)
A HOLIDAY SONG FOR YOU
(to the tune of “Deck the Halls”)
Deck the trailer with Florida Holly
Fa la la la la la la la la
‘Tis the season to be jolly
Fa la la la la la la la la
Dress in sweaters oh, so tacky
Fa la la Fa la la la la la
Strum the strings, play something whacky
Fa la la la la la la la la…
(c) 2017 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: My mandolin and baritone ukulele with Florida Holly
DECIDED TO ADD ON A ROUGH DRAFT OF WHAT WILL BE THE BODY OF THE SONG:
Year after year
Our lives so dear
You disappeared
Taking my heart
We’re forever apart
As you stay locked
In the wood of the tree
Never to be free
Lost hearts of Palm…
Playing one day
Polished obsidian ball
Our two faces reflected
Happiness and perfection
You invented words
In a foreign tongue
I laughed, joined in
We chanted, having fun
Suddenly gone…
You are suddenly gone
Suddenly gone from me
Never did I dream
You’d be so close
Locked away in wood
Brown and gray
I thought I’d dreamed you
And then awoke
Until one foggy morning
I heard your voice
So far away
And yet so close
Heard your voice
Calling my name
Found an axe
But you shouted “No!”
The bark, the leaves, the heart of palm
Part of you
Found that old obsidian ball
Polished, washed, sun drenched
Held it next to my heart
Whispered my love
Nothing, nothing
(Please, please)
Silence from the swamp trees
Words, what words
Did we say
That terrible day
I ask, but you no longer answer
© 2017 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Two views of my palm tree 2015 & 2017
(it sure did grow/as if it holds the key/to my happiness)
Living in separate
Swirls of Nature
Coriolis Effect
Of whirling rain
Water down drains
Yet we pleasure the same
From birds and leaves
Clouds and trees
Souls tethered by
Distant shores of
Natural phenomena
© 2017 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Coriolis Effect, Mother Nature Network
Trees bowing to me
As I drink fresh-ground coffee
Only 62 degrees!
Wrapped in Autumn’s fleece
Feeling that kiss of peace
Dogs leaping into space
Birds in my face
Demanding suet’s grease
Mornings like this
Reassure me
All is right in the universe…
© 2017 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Eastern sky of blowing leaves
Hey, just got home and wanted to do a quick thank you. Waited out the hurricane at a motel that lost power but had really thick walls. We were quite lucky that Irma stayed on land; would have been worse if it tore along the Gulf.
What a beautiful sight to see all the Live Oaks standing (instead of crashing through my roof). They did shed a lot of branches but they’re ok. Best of all, the electricity was on! Priority was making coffee and turning on the air con 🙂
One small tree uprooted and took out the well pipe. No water at all, but I had filled the washer before leaving and there are about 10 gallons of drinking water from the R.O.U. (Reverse Osmosis Unit). Fortunately, my roomie is a hoarder, so he’s busily gluing and fixing a new pipe that will hopefully work.
Anyway, just want to thank you for your good thoughts, vibrations and prayers. Certainly seemed to work for me. I know there are people not so lucky and even a few miles away, in Elfers, the Anclote River will crest today, going up 25 feet. Mandatory evacuation there, but many of us don’t really have anywhere to go. So good wishes to the Elfers residents.
You’ve all been busily writing and I promise to try and read everything, although I may not comment.
Sastimos! (good health, and of course, love and peace to us all)
Through two decades
A dead Live Oak
Stood upright
Perch for families
Of Florida Black Vultures
What sights I’ve seen
On that stage
Young buzzards courting
Males competing for
The belle of the bough
Married couple kissing
Passing food between beaks
Here they are with baby
Showing him how to perch
And search
For newly-made swamp corpses
Other days watching them
Wings outspread
Drying out stormy feathers
One day the mom and dad gone
Baby sat for three days
Finally the smaller one returned
Maybe dad creamed by a car
While cleaning up the road kill
In the middle of city streets
Then the other day
A muffled crash in the swamp
Perch finally fell
And here I go in pursuit of my “art”
Worrying about Water Moccasins
And other snakes
As I wade through the grass
Snap, snap
On smart phone
That does no justice
To the thumbnails of Nature
Suddenly recalling last week
Vulture in my yard
Broken wing
Hopping around
Looking for a way out
I opened the gate and tried shooing him
But he didn’t get it
He did find a pile of tables and plants
Climbed up over the fence
Relieved he escaped
Yet what are the chances
A bird will live safely
With a damaged wing
Birds
Trees
Life yet death symbols for me
And I recall sitting under
Another Live Oak
Many years ago
And it splitting
For no good reason
Phone ringing, me running
My mother’s voice funereal
My favorite uncle died
The trees never lie
But do I think a tree
Can actually be
A psychopomp?
Birds play that role for me
But would a bird
Lead a bird
To the afterlife
Or does the tree’s soul
Take control?
After all
They were friends for so many years…
© 2017 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGES: Live Oak perch fallen in my swamp and FL Black Vulture on the perch in my swamp
Shifting wind
Storms of acorns
Still
Summer green
Spatter the overgrown yard
Sons of hunting black
Snakes
Sidewinding through
Sandy
Soil
Soon to brumate in burrows
Squirrels
Scamper in Live Oaks’ leaves
Swinging like trapeze artists
Snapping branches
Swaying canopy bisecting
Summer and Fall
Season of hurricanes dissipated
Staccato
Secret of winter
Swears acorn-rain
Signals the welcome coolness
Cyan
Sky by day
Stars visible by night
Cycling through constellational delight
Swan
Song of
Summer…
© 2016 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
*Feel like I was a tree in a previous incarnation (and an amoeba, dog, and sundry other collections of cells)
I was a young adult tree
When chopped down
We all silently screamed
But somehow
Lying dying
I noticed that some were missed
My friend Adonis was one
A proud, Bosnian Pine
And now, scrolling through FB
In my newest incarnation
I recognize him
Being celebrated as the oldest living tree
In Europe
From the Pindus Mountains in northern Greece
And my previous life flashes through my mind
Back to times before the axmen came
And murdered us for nothing
Leaving us there to rot
While they picked some berries
From our leafy hair
Or snapped off twigs to build a fire
Before that
We all stood in the Spring dawn as the sap rose
From the roots to the tips of branches
We all stood in the Summer nights
Softly singing our tree songs
Only heard by the forest fauna
Who smiled and slept in our roots
And branches
We all stood in the Autumn afternoons
Hearing the crackling of our red and brown leaves
As hunters moved through the forest
We trees trying to shelter our smaller friends
Fated to be dinner for these men
We all stood in the Winter mornings
Grateful for the snow that kept us warm
Holding in the moisture where we burrowed into the Earth
I did not last long
But happy to read that Adonis is still the Guardian
Of flora and fauna and lost souls who wander
Through the paths
Lovers who shelter in his leaves
Adonis who was a seedling in Byzantium
Adonis as an Ottoman at the age of 500 Earth years
Adonis as a witness when Nazi Germany
Occupied Greece
I wonder if Adonis
Can live another thousand years
And if not
Who will he be
Reincarnated like me
Imagine all the knowledge
And wisdom
Contained in his brain
Manifested into one
Who this time can run
When the axmen
Inevitably come
Again…
© 2016 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Adonis, via Dr. Oliver Konter, Mainz
The wind sings different songs to us
In our special pageants of power
I feel threatened by yours
You feel contempt for mine
Or is it merely a projection
Of the sheltering tree’s longing
To fly far away?
The soaring bird’s longing
For permanent roots?
The bird needs to rest in the
Arms of the tree
The tree needs to feel the
Caress of bird’s feathers
Can a tree be content
With only her leafy hair flying?
Can a bird be satisfied
Temporarily sojourning
In the roots of a tree?
© 1992 & 2016 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: My Live Oak at sundown
Leyland Cypress
Name suggesting
Ley lines on the land
Lovingly planted
When the century was new
Barely as tall as my knee
To someday be
A screening tree
Southern climate
Encourages it
To grow, grow, grow
Shielding me from nasty neighbors
Hiding ugly PVC pipes
Reaching through sand
To provide water from a well
Extending to hell, for all we know
Because Florida aquifers
Are right below the surface
Deep wells don’t really exist
For those of us living a few miles
From the Gulf
Yet on my dirt road
Where city water will not condescend to travel
A ten-foot water well
Is used for drinking and showers
Now my beautiful tree
Is cankered
I’ve pruned
Sprayed Lysol and alcohol
But the prognosis is bleak
Mourning sets in
As the air-borne disease
Already seeks the new tree
I will not be here
If the baby escapes illness and death
If it grew while the century flew
To its mid-time
But still
A tree should be
Part of Mother Earth’s crown
But like many of her jewels
It will disappear forever…
© 2016 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
