Live Encounters Poetry & Writing May 2024.
To The Old Carob Tree, poems by Alicia Viguer-Espert.
To The Old Carob Tree
we used to climb as children
Like then,
enter my eyes, oh light!
illuminate the path to return home,
point at the old carob tree with your luminous fingers,
the vast universe of its foliage,
the shades of its ancient leaves drunk with chlorophyl
and the darken veteran ones already harden.
Show me the road embroidered
with violent reds from poppies, nightingales’ songs,
like then.
To find you, carob tree
I’ll focus my melancholic gaze
on the mystic milieu of these abandoned fields.
I know that tomorrow
when the ancient guitar player of the wind strings
the musical instrument of your branches,
I will inhale your spicy fragrance, the sweet lullaby of my childhood mountains.
Light, return to my eyes from distance and time,
join me, undress the shadows,
let the aroma from my old carob tree guide me to my home’s center,
like then.
A Dove and a Canary
To Renee Amitai’s art
Today in LA a French artist promised
to reveal the tale behind her canvass:
beginning, middle, and end.
I yearn to ask how she charms blank surfaces
to speak, determines brush itineraries, creates
color families, and at the mystical moment
a genie whispers the work’s completion,
in what language does she hear,
“the task is accomplished.”
She tells me about la liberté des idées,
the practiced dance of hand and vision,
inner concerns shaped by social issues,
assures me the work is never finished,
hears no magic words in her inner ear, only
the arrival of a new child weans the older one.
I notice a dove floating in luminous attire,
a white tuxedo preened in pink mother-of-pearl,
refusing to look back toward the speckled flock
behind darkening sand as the eve approaches.
Mellow golden tulips entice yellows of hope
to hover at the center of its vision.
Above green water, light from a fiery sun
turns its embers into a tangerine glow,
before it swallows rainbow shades
as it travels to the other side of the earth.
A white triangle protects a nascent tree
struggling to emerge after the flood.
A canary holds a twig given by Noah,
the dove retains the olive branch, searches
for receding waters, but only the canary
warbles, happy songs illuminating
Renée’s foliage garden where hidden
melodious birds nest already.
© Alicia Viguer-Espert
Alicia Viguer-Espert, born and raised in the Mediterranean city of Valencia, Spain, lives in Los Angeles. A three times Pushcart nominee, she has been published in Lummox Anthologies, Altadena Poetry Review, ZZyZx, Panoply, Rhyvers, River Paw Press, Amethyst Review, Odyseey.pm, and Live Encounters among others. Her chapbooks To Hold a Hummingbird, Out of the Blue Womb of the Sea and 4 in 1, focus on language, identity, home, nature, and soul. In addition to national and international publications, she is included in “Top 39 L.A. Poets of 2017,” “Ten Poets to Watch in 2018,” and “Bards of Southern California: Top 30 poets,” by Spectrum.
wonderful imagination of images.