Spoken word artist Susa Silvermarie is a widely published and anthologized writer known for original work that delights the senses while calling the spirit. Silvermarie is grateful to spend her third trimester of life lakeside here in Mexico, sharing her work at www.susasilvermarie.com. Her collections Poems for Flourishing and Tales from My Teachers on the Alzheimer’s Unit are available on Amazon. A new collection, Who Will Board the Silver Boat was published in 2024.
Conchita
Her name is Conchita.
I don’t know how old she is
or the rest of her name,
though I know about her son, Angel.
Once on the Day of the Dead,
she went to the cemetery to visit him.
Today we eat ice cream cones
Sitting together on the curb.
Day before yesterday,
we shared blackberries.
Lots of people give her coins or food,
but I think she still goes hungry often.
We don’t know each other’s native tongue.
In the language that’s second for each of us,
we speak mostly in the present tense.
Seven years we’ve known each other.
When we first met, she still could work,
setting up her backstop loom
in the eucalyptus grove every single day.
She know I’m from El Norte.
I know she was born
near Oaxaca in a Triqui village.
But really, we have no idea
where each other comes from.
Sometimes she and my son
laugh at beach other on my phone screen.
Conchita remembers the visit when
my boy brought along his dad.
Bill bought a blanket from her,
one chosen from her clothesline
strung between the eucalyptus trees.
Later UI showed Conchita
a photo of Bill’s green burial,.
her own woven blanket
draped over his simple pine box.
Silent and understanding, she nodded.
Conchita is more obstinate
than anyone I’ve ever met.
I admire it, and,
sometimes I raise my voice
when she won’t accept
help she seems to need.
Tomorrow I’ll sit on the curb
and share a coffee with her.
I don’t know how or when
she turned into my best friend.
Or why it took me this long to to know it
*****
Danaus I
Danaus (Dä ná ōs) commonly cabutterfly familylles monarchs, tigers, milkweeds, wanderers, and queens, a genus of butterflies in the Tiger butterfly Tribe.
This caterpillar, no other.
She hatched from a particular
Monarch egg.
On the milkweed, her stripes so bright,
yellow and black and white.
Not just any carwerpillar.
This one I watched grow fat,
this one I watched
attach her end to a leaf, hang upside down,
and split her exoskeleton at her head.
This caterpillar
who slowly discharged a thin silk shawl
and covered herself with its length.
And just before she went into metamorphic sleep,
just before the sea-green chrysalis
sewed itself neatly closed,
she wriggled fiercely inside it.
I watched, while from the top of her cocoon,
the tiny bundle of her skin was tossed.
Every day I stare and wonder
what it must be like
to let one’s body parts dissolve,
to experience transformation
into parts of another creature.
I watched the jewel of her chrysalis
darken into mystery.
Is it bliss in there?
The egg she started from
was laid by Mama in October,
so the butterfly will be
this year’s generation Four,
the ones that live ten times as long.
Thought probably, transfiguration
rates her full attention more than age.
She’s focused so intently, in fact,
surrendering so completely,
that she seizes my devotion too.
I watch the chrysalis and wonder
what? What?
What bit must be like inside?
*****
Danaus II
Not just any butterfly, this one
was still a worm when I first knew her.
The one I got to watch
wriggle out of her caterpillar skin
after she wove her sock of silk.
I didn’t get to see her burst
the chrysalis this morning, but when I woke,
she was a brand new creature
testring and testing her strength.
Filmy wings that look like glass,
delicate legs, feet that can taste!
Velvet body, spotted head,
quivering gossamer antennae.
A queenly monarch priming for flight.
Four fill hours she took
to warm, to practice, to gather herself.
I slipped my coffee, and both off us waited
for the sun to touch my patio.
And then, she lifted to air.
She fluttered up,
sailing her zigzag way.
The crawling one could fly!
I held my breath the while
she glided in my garden,
letting the breeze become her friend.
Then I watched her beauty rise
high against the blue of sky.
I think of her now,
finding a wider world.
I also think of us,
trying to transform our species.
May our own evolving be as exquisite
as this very particular
caterpillar’s courageous magic.
I blow a kiss and wish her well
on her birthday as a butterfly.
*****
Dressed in All Our Decades
We’re dressed in all our decades,
in rich brocades of life
well-worn, and regularly mended.
Vivid restoration patches (a knee, a hip),
make us into living art.
Our grand and tatty brains
save us from the trivial
forgotten things,
spare us for what matters.
Delightfully scuffed
by life’s great dance
We are rubbed, toward circle’s end,
to the luster of original wonder.
We as elders take our place,
to turn the world
beyond the patriarchal blindness
and celebrate the holy dance
of everything alive.
We rouse and wake,
in the spaciousness of aging
more alive
than we have ever been.
*****
For You Who Cannot
Hijab: cover, barrier; a religious dress code for women
I read that you bare rounded up
for violations of hijab’
many of you raped in custody.
If you make it back home
you bow your heads in shame,
viewed as dishonored,
and too frequently my sisters,
you end your own lives.
No, No. You were violated
but it is the Taliban rapists
who have lost their honor.
They displace their shame
upon you, the women they rape.
But it is not you, my sisters,
who become less
because of what they did.
Let us scrub one another clean
of their shameful deeds.
Let us rise in the midst of pain
from every woman-hating assault,
and begin to see clearly
whose soul it is that is stained.
For you who cannot,
I name the criminals.
*****
Lace Beneath Our Feet
Mycorrhizal mycorrhizal,
say it over, learn it quick.
Under your feet as you read this
the earth is moving,
swelling her net, crocheting her lace.
If once you comprehend it,
the wonderstruck won’t leave.
Invisible fungi
fiercely fastening the trees,
hitching and pinning it all.
Oh bridge, oh link,
keep us and teach us
how to do it with each other.
Mycorrhizal mycorrhizal
mother net of love.
*****
Late Years
Late years feel like this:
lifting a wish,
weighing a breath,
holding a bag of feathers.
I savor cherries still,
a gratitude dance in my mouth,
a taste that takes all of me up —
I relish the flesh I wear.
But now my being can fly.
What’s gone is the fighting,
that anvil of struggle.
I float like a dandelion puff.
Blown into a wisp, ah,
my ponderous past.
In my little life story,
the winds of time so lighten me.
After he retired and moved to Sedona, Arizona, he taught literature at Yavapai College in Clarkdale, Arizona.
He and professional artist Bev Kephart bought a small motor home in 2003, sold most of their possessions, and traveled the U. S. for seven years. After visiting Mexico several times, they settled in the village of Ajijic, joining the ex-pat artist and writing communities.
Mel’s writing has been published online and in print in The United Kingdom, The United States, Mexico, New Zealand, and Australia. He is the author of three novels, a book of short stories, and several books of poetry. He and his wife now make their home in the village of San Nicholas de Ibarra.
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