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14th Anniversary Edition, Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume One Nov-Dec 2023
Birds’ Journey, poems by Valentina Teclici.
Birds’ Journey
Every song has their own birds,
sounds of forests’ flute,
breeze of poppy fields,
shouts and swipers of the ocean.
Every flight has its own wings
soaring high, under the sky’s armpit and,
even higher towards the soul’s home,
or descending towards the ridge of the sea’s waves,
the field’s lap or homely bushes.
Every bird has her own journey
of faraway travels or sedentary life
of nests built every year
of new chicks, new commitments,
perpetual routines.
Every cage has its own bird
empty of joyful songs
full of useless wings,
empty of real freedom
full of sorrow of captivity,
full of flightless desires.
Who has designed the first cage?
Does the first bird trapped in it
still remember her song?
Falling for Galatea
Pygmalion fondly looked at Galatea
with all the love of his creative spirit
and… not only with that.
He caressed her cold and shiny shapes
with his rough and hot hands
of a man full of desires, and kissed her
with his lips, thirsty like a dried oasis.
Galatea, with her body still full of suffering
from the bites of the chisel,
looked at him from above, motionless, and
cold… a statue.
She told him with her mind:
‘If you transform my stone body
into the flesh and blood of a human being,
you will be the slave of your lust
for a mortal woman
who might make you temporarily happy,
but eternally unhappy.
Think twice about your choices, Pygmalion!
The goddess Aphrodite
has her eyes on you.’
Meditation
I close my eyes…
I’m only dream, energy,
longing songs, sorrow, joy, hope,
and poetry.
Particles of my energy history
remember my previous names
and all my previous lives…
l lived in a cave,
in an abode dug into rocks,
a palace, a boat house, a marae…
I carry within images and scents
of exotic places unrecorded in novels,
travelogues and maps.
I walk on the velvet moss in the forests,
and kneel in front of a sunset and pray,
I surf on the mirror of the sea,
taming my awareness
then I climb a hill
and hug an old rimu tree
that hugs me back.
A curtain of silence
connects the vibes.
I open my eyes
and I am one with everything.
© Valentina Teclici
Valentina Teclici, Romanian born, immigrated to New Zealand in 2002. In 1999, she completed a PhD in sociology at the University of Bucharest, with a thesis about street children. Her debut book, De la noi din gradiniţă (From our Kindergarden), Ion Creangă Publishing House,1986, was awarded a national prize. Poems and excerpts from her books for children are included in the bibliography and textbooks for primary and secondary education in Romania. She has published several books of sociology, poetry and stories for children in both Romanian and English. Her work has been translated into French, Te Reo and Spanish, and published in many magazines and anthologies in New Zealand and overseas.
In 2016 and 2018, Valentina edited and translated the bilingual collection “Poetical Bridges – Poduri lirice” (Vol I & II), Scripta manent Publishing House, Ltd., Napier, that includes the work of 24 Romanian poets and 24 poets from New Zealand. Valentina has been a member of Writers’ Union of Romania since 1993 and of the New Zealand Poetry Society since 2013.