Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume Five November-December 2024
Power, poems by Alicia Viguer-Espert.
Power
Imagining the places it has seen
I notice copper, bark brown,
golden on the wings’ underside
before it lands on the railing.
Too close for comfort.
Those watchful eyes fixed on me,
bent neck to better listen
to my pounding heart.
Too awe producing to move.
The majestic chest of a king
imposing silence,
death to small creatures,
I breathe slowly
to befriend something,
not a companion
but a reminder
of the power of effortless
union with everything on the sky
and the hawk’s s ability
to achieve stillness.
How Will You Know When I’m Dead?
Will you feel the vibrations of my departing soul?
Can you sense the pain of my fractured vertebrae
when we have not seen each other in forty years?
My once long dark hair, now short and gray,
my face, crisscrossed by freeway lanes going nowhere.
You lost that golden-red mane
I butchered before going to India,
a mishap
which saved you from looking too pretty.
I remember your eyes, a duplicate of the Blue Planet
astronauts saw in the darkness of space, shining
in Greece, as we tried to sleep inside a plastic tent,
your American hunting knife under the mat
to defend us from predators.
How your body glowed under the candle light
at that hotel in Herat after our private sandstorm!
How our moon-lit feet snaked around the Ganges,
ears bent to discern noises from frogs, cobras, crickets and tigers,
which like scissors cut the Himalayas’ night into 1000 pieces.
How, like rich Indian tourists, we sipped coffee
leaning on our cottage veranda in Ooty
enjoying the mountain view until our first fight.
Before this,
we dozed on top of Mount Saint Victoire,
Cezanne on our minds,
rain hitting the tent like bullets.
We should have known,
but didn’t.
Didn’t know
walking the Taj Mahal hand in hand
dreaming of the monument our love would leave behind,
nor dancing at Srinagar’s Floating Gardens.
Because we didn’t know it wouldn’t last,
in Pokhara
you purchased two circles of braided copper, gold and silver
we wore for the remainder of the trip,
twin hoops binding us
like a pair of identical sparrows,
those tender birds with a very short life span,
which explains a lot,
though it does not answer the question,
how will you know when I’m dead?
© Alicia Viguer-Espert
Alicia Viguer-Espert is a poet, and artist transplanted to Los Angeles, CA but born in Valencia, Spain. As member of a bilingual family, Castilian and Valenciano, the language spoken in the Old Kingdom of Valencia, she inherited an interest in languages; English she learned as an adult upon arriving in the United States. Raised at the shore of the Mediterranean, she considers its history, mythology, culinary diets, languages and soul as her own, and her poetry often reflects this deep love. Her work has been published nationally and internationally in journals, print media and anthologies. Winner of the San Gabriel Valley Poetry Festival on 2017, she is also the author of three chapbooks. In addition, she’s included in “Top 39 LA poets,” “Ten Poets to Watch 2018” and “Bards of Southern California: Top 30 Poets,” by Spectrum. She’s a three times Pushcart nominee.