“Dazzle By Day”: Poetry from “Intimacies” by Neruda with paintings by Heebner

Dazzle of Day
by Pablo Neruda

Enough now of the wet eyes of winter.
Not one single tear.
Hour by hour, green is beginning,
the essential season, leaf by leaf,
until, by spring’s name, we are summoned
to take part in its joy.

How wonderful, its eternal openness,
clean air, the promise of flower,
the full moon leaving
its calling card in the foliage,
men and women trailing from the beach
with a wet basket of shifting silver.

Like love, like a medal,
I welcome it,
I take it all in,
from south, from north, from violins,
from dogs,
lemons, clay,
from newly liberated air,
machines smelling of mystery,
storm-colored shopping,
everything I need:
orange blossoms, string,
grapes like topazes,
the whiff of waves.
I gather it up
endlessly,
effortlessly,
I breathe.

I dry my shirt in the wind,
and my opened heart.
The sky falls
and falls.
From my glass,
I drink
pure joy.

~ Pablo Neruda

NOTE: Photo of the bride and groom and officiant (aka Art Predator) by Sandy Grotsky.

I love this poem so much that, after a shaman smudged (the wedding site,  those attending and the bridal party) and sent out prayers to the four directions, I started the wedding I officiated last Sunday with this poem by Pablo Neruda.

And I love this book so much, with its beautiful artwork, that I used it to “hold” the pages of the service. It was so important to me that when I realized it had been left behind in the bride’s hotel room, I ran next door to get it even though we were ready to start the wedding!

The wedding concluded with Neruda as well; here’s a link to the poem we did.

Other than starting an hour late, and a bit of a fiasco with the cold, sleepy butterflies, and that there were lots of children (the groom has triplets), and there were a LOT of moving parts, the wedding went really well.

People could even hear me–even though I wasn’t amplified! And they loved the service. Somehow I made the Christian mom happy, the Jewish mom happy, those hippy dippy artsy fartsy friends of ours happy, and most importantly, the bride and groom happy.

I even made me happy! I borrowed (from Bryan Legere at the Ventura Yoga Studio) a large heavy solid bronze Lord Ganesha to remove all obstacles (like my Hebrew) and Guan Yin was already in the house looking out for us with her thousand eyes and ready to reach out with one of her thousand hands to help perform whatever miracle we needed (like my Hebrew!).

Plus, encouraged by the bride and groom to read some of my own work, I even read the last two stanzas of one of my poems from my new book of 3:15 experiment poetry  Middle of the Night Poems from Daughter to Mother :: Mother to Son  from en theos press 2011. It’s available in paperback (also from Amazon) or as an ebook. Read sample poems here. Read a review by Robert Peake here.

For more poetry by bloggers from all over the world, catch the Monday Poetry Train!