On Nostalgia and Inspiration: The Month of May 2013

Perhaps it’s this time of the year that fills me with an overwhelming longing for the past. I feel the evanescent beauty of spring settling into a memory. Yet this melancholia stirring sadness inside me also inspires an awareness of feelings that transcend time. Everything changes, moves on as we must. There is no destination but the journey we are on and the heart is filled with desires that light the way. The beauty of this month of May, the fragile joy of once barren trees now adorned in emerald, and flowers painting the lawns with color will soon be torched with summer heat. And as I place this scenery into my mind, images of other spring times appear.

I am traveling in Iran where I lived for two years.  We were heading, my partner and I, for Yasouj a city in the Zagros Mountains. I was falling asleep, dulled by the humming of the car engine when the most unusual sight appeared out of nowhere.  Tribal women were squatting in the river that glistened along the fields stretching below the mountains. They were washing their clothes and rugs in the stream dotted with snow that had barely melted. We stopped the car to take in the breathtaking moment that I recorded in the following poem.

The Road to Yasouj

The cold breath
of the distant mountains
has melted
The tribal women
are washing
their clothes
in the icicle spotted
stream
just formed
around
their squatting shapes
cajoled by the froth
hitting the stones
they are touching

Silently their hands
are parting
the icy sheet
The brocade cloths
they have shed
colors the water
into exploding prisms
splintering
the winter face
of the river
into a smile

And I
passing by
must stay
awhile
to see
the magic garments
drying
in the arms
of trees
transformed
into
a tribal tapestry

© Mariette Bermowitz 2013

And when nostalgia captures my being again, I welcome it for it takes me back to places and moments that have filled my life with meaning. With summer approaching I am inspired to travel once more, to continue the journey, and welcome adventures where I can discover myself all over again.

Sometimes we don’t have to travel very far to be inspired as with this poem I read while riding on the F train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.

                       Voyager

I have become an orchid
Washed in on the salt white beach.
Memory
What can I make of it now
that might please you —
This life, already wasted
And still strewn with miracles?

—Mary Ruefle (1952), Poetry in Motion