Casa de Charlotte Della Luna

The daily thunderstorm has stopped and I’m able to access the city’s free wifi so, hopefully *fingers crossed*, I can get a post out. I’m still without my high-speed cable internet access and the wifi is sensitive (can you say bee-yotch!). My life has been a thunderstorm itself lately….I barley mentioned a few things in my last posts. Well more and more and more has come — throw it at me, LIFE!! More opportunities to practice meditating!

So I have promised to post poems from Valentine Pierce’s new book Geometry of the Heart published and available for purchase by Portals Press.

The poems in this book encompass a variety of subjects and feelings.
She talks about having the blues in How The Blues Hits and in Blue, Blue, Blues, two that spoke to me personally.

She talks about community in Community Effort, about the victims of violence in our city and Public Affairs, an angry indictment of society’s blind eye to violence in the black community. It will make you angry too.

I love Handmaiden, a poem that really grabs and shakes me. I’m not sure I’m interpreting it in the way she means but it is so very powerful, to me.

She writes about love and sensuality such as in You Never Know and Presence of Mind, two of the most sensual poems I’ve ever read.

And the reason I bought the book in the first place, she writes about Hurricane Katrina and The Federal Flood – about the days of not knowing, the days of despair and the long, long days of exile. This is the reason I bought the book but in the reading I’ve come to realize all of her poems are strong, intuitive, heart-felt and balance the book very well.

I had a dilemma in deciding which of her Katrina poems I wanted to post. I emailed her and discussed my favorites: Gone Too Long II, Body Bags, End of Forever and On the Fourth Day. We agreed on the last which is the one I’m posting today.
The reason I was drawn to this poem was the subject, her mother, and her decision not to evacuate. Valentine told me she hopes this poem will explain to people why so many of our elderly didn’t evacuate for Katrina. Sadly, 64% of storm/levee breach related deaths were 61 and older.

On The Fourth Day
By Valentine Pierce

……and on the fourth day the sun rose
and my son called
and my mother was alive
my mother is a hardheaded woman, doesn’t listen.
they tell me I am hardheaded too and my daughter, my son;
we joke — where did we get it from?
that old woman pissed me off
told her to leave;
my son called her after midnight,
grandma, he said, you need to leave
but she is a stubborn old woman –
lived through camille, through betsy,
through all the ones that came in the days when
the wetlands protected us,
before the swamps were swallowed up by progress.
that old woman scared her grandchildren —
my daughter most of all,
who said she didn’t want to know until we knew;
and when we knew my daughter said it was good
because she was starting to get upset about it,
starting to have problems with it.
finally, we knew and we were happy,
lord, so exceedingly happy, and angry
with her in Arkansas and us everywhere but home.
she said she was okay, being taken care of,
didn’t want for anything
and I thought, how funny:
for the first time in her life
my mother doesn’t want for anything.
I guess, at that moment, hearing her voice,
I didn’t want for anything either.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The next post (whenever that may be!) will be Perfect Friend
.