Beyond Temples, poetry by Martina Newberry

Beyond Temples

Poems by

Martina Reisz Newberry

published by

Deerbrook Editions

P.O. Box 542

Cumberland, ME 04021

www.deerbrookeditions.com

Preview catalog: issuu.com/deerbrookeditions

first edition

© 2024 by Martina Reisz Newberry

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 979-8-9865052-6-8

Book Design by Jeffrey Haste

“You know how it is. You pick up a book, flip to the dedication, and find that, once again, the author has dedicated a book to someone else and not you. Not this time.

Because we haven’t yet met/have only a glancing acquaintance/ are just crazy about each other/haven’t seen each other in much too long/are in some way related/will never meet, but will, I trust, despite that, always think fondly of each other . . .

This one’s for you.

With you know what, and you probably know why.”

–Neil Gaiman

Even in Temples . . . Memories incarnated, Lifetimes pulled through a thousand minds, Cadences bearing time, Rhymes connecting life, Stanzas stacked like the generations.

—Deng Ming-Dao, “Even in Temples”

Beyond Temples

One day, on a walk through a not so deserted place, I found a deserted church with broken folding chairs and a plastic lectern.The windows which had never known stained glass, were boarded, and there were three mice chasing each other ‘round the floor. It seemed a perfect place. Tall on the dirty stage, from my notebook I conferred my poems. No time limit, no faces, noises of shifting dust and cars out there somewhere, I read for many minutes, emoting here and there, hands rising and falling, singing through some. I spoke of my doomed country, I chanted the names of God, I sang of sunup and cream-filled pastries. Behind that plastic pulpit, I felt no new fears—only those I came with—and, when I stepped down, a groan went up from all who knew love, knew it was no longer there.

We cast curses at the moon, watch its face travel over then behind clouds, then come to the fore as if beckoned when it most certainly was not. Booze and blackberries on the front porch and the cries of dead beasts and warriors out there.

Imagine it

Hold it in your head as you do song lyrics and prayers. The strange scents of late nights call us to remember our weaknesses and the ill will we’ve encountered in others. We talk of these things bring them closer.

And oh the madness of this porch how it dares to receive our complaints and our compliances how it rests under our flip-flops and naked toes how it shifts under spilled sweet tea and dripped foam off cans of Bud Light

Does it make you grin that I’ve said this?

So, the moon hovers and we here below pull it over us, imagine it soft when in truth it’s dense as a mango dum dum.

Inside, we look for rest knowing our mendacity could pull down the stars knowing our joys are simple masks for grudges the way they jibe

My God

The way we consume bitterness fill our plates, pour on gravies and sauces of fear and then dare to sleep on that repletion.

I woke today thinking I’d write something welcoming the arrival of dawn. It wasn’t to be. Something portentous hung in the air, lay on the bedspread. It seemed difficult to discern scent from secret. A grubby, unhappy mendacity floated through the room, riding backscatter the way backscatter rides long rays of light. We are not winning the wars, said the light. We present Death with countless bodies. Never are we paid back for them. No wars are ever won, they are only continued from one square mile to the next.

The thought came to me then that these decades of barbarism have warped the world, that we damage the very beds we sleep in, the chairs we sit on, the earth we stomp on (call it “walking” if you like). Killing and more of it appears daily on our doorsteps & in the countries of those we claim are brothers/sisters/comrades/friends. I woke today with unclear cries chafing my ears. It took no time at all, less than a faint whisker flick from the cat, to know they were the cries of the souls we continue to waylay in the name of almighty love.

In The Course Of Human Events

The year I visited North Carolina, I flew on a half-filled plane to see my very good friend,

I wore a hat made in Peru and boots from Sears, Roebuck & Co, I read from a book on the history of the Shakers, and I wondered throughout the entire flight how it was that anyone could love anything so much in this world.

My days then were named Wonder and Pain— those rapacious twins. So, I flew away in my

Peruvian hat and my unreal smile. “Live in the NOW,” they say. “Live only in the Present Moment.”

I hold that particular truth to be self-evident. Still, as we set down on the concrete, my third eye was already looking backwards and inward to when the adventure began.

Mid-Morning, Minnesota

I walked near a pond once on a day so warm, so humid that all the atmosphere resembled an old white sheet, bleached & worn, but heavier than old linen should be. The water was still, resting. The plants twitched when accosted by dragonflies; so did I.

Unscented flowers

I couldn’t name stood up out of the dingle and sedge surrounding. There was duckweed and an odor hung about the place of unwashed bodies in the heat.

Mid-morning it was and I walked slowly, worried about the surprise of snakes and cautious of the uncertain earth

barely solid so near the water. I tell you, that place wanted more than anything to be beautiful. It wanted to be as mysterious as eternal life and I wished that too, but the warm black water had dozed for too long and the owls’ hooked beaks had tossed beauty to the night; it had yet to return.

Courting Wonder

You have to be amenable to Wonder. You have to read the spaces between the words as well as the text and you have to see that where you step may be earth scattered over with a magic loess.*

You have to believe that hands as well as eyes let you see souls; lips as well as fingertips heal. You have to believe that the God of the White Tiger is the God of you, that demons live in every lie ever told, in every day of loneliness come to any living creature.

You have to discern that a voice is a bin that holds, folds and releases tears, fury, glee. When you have faith in these things, astonishment will visit your doorstep and there will be an unstinting flight to your days, burning stars in your dreams.

*A loosely compacted yellowish-gray deposit of windblown sediment

Do Not Doubt That I Love This Life

Early dark breaks my heart, so, all through the Fall and Winter,

I am sad. I handle the blackness of night—star fragments

glittering through—with grace, but it is gloaming that makes me pale and afraid in my mind. Outdoors, the trees and plants and the grass place the burden of dusk directly on my shoulders.

The smells of simmering stews and soups make me ache as if

I’ve come down with flu. Having told you all these things, I’ll soon

resign this page to itself. Until then, do not doubt that

I love this life regardless of twilight. I love my days, my man and my faded jeans. I love my kids and my cat,

my bars of sweet-smelling soaps. I love hot water and my staunch,

stained sneakers. Do not doubt that I love this life. I simply wish it was Spring then Summer. That’s all.

Quieter

Could it get any quieter? A silence so profound, a stillness in the atmosphere, a vacuum opening to swallow my atonement—space where there is no sound; you put my pleas there. I whispered forgive me every time I passed you in rooms/hallways/kitchens/commodes. You’ve dismissed me, darling. You don’t think I realize it, but, forgive me, I know abandonment when it is present; its silence is deafening.

While the gurus tell us confidence is key and self-love is the foundation for everything we can ever be, I watch the Weather Channel and find comfort in the apparitions of tidal waves, how they dissemble all the soiled places and wash them clean as Eden.

Lagoon

Is a serene heart really what we’re after? A heart like a mound of dough soon to be a croissant or a scone with currants and glazed top? Nothing equals passion’s abandonment though it leads us to queasy awareness that all ends in abandonment anyway. Everything does. But, if you don’t want your life to be one of the earth’s vacant lots, you’ll abdicate peace and leap into passion’s dark lagoon. After the water settles, There’s plenty of time time for scones with or without glazes.

Winter Damages

You may wonder why I live in winter when I so love spring and summer. I, too, wonder that, my friend. Though my paint pot of gesso is well-used, it never quite hides the bruises winter inflicts on the days, trees, clouds, grasses, faces, souls and sketches of souls.Winter damages, and I wish we could be undamaged, not forever of course, but for a good long while in which all our plants would bloom, all our smiles would be returned, all our clothes would fit, no dust would settle in our rooms, no cakes would fall or burn in our ovens.

The truth is that I grow tired of my contusions becoming oblations to a godhead I fear but don’t know how to love.

My spirit wicks three times its size in dread and regrets during that frigid, gray time, then converts to clarified butter when the breezes warm and the clouds embrace white. I pray for it to be spring then summer all year. I have no idea what this might mean to the rest of the planet if my prayer was granted. What do you think, friend? Is it an appropriate prayer? If you

love me, you’ll say “yes.” I’m just asking of you what I ask of God. Say what you think. It’s appropriate...not too much to ask.

Mining

Something new thumping away at the door of her perceptions

Something needs forgiving she supposes the soul of some machine awakened then abandoned

Or a new waterway channeling through waiting for some impressive words to dam it up.

Something is knocking and catches her attention: an almost kiss, a sweet breath Something whispers her name. The clay seam crouches under her dreams and visions Of some things she is certain:

Her days have the quality of vitrification that they will be fired in a furnace and become like bricks.

Me And Tiresias

Tiresias was a blind prophet, the most famous soothsayer of ancient Greece.

We don’t have snow here but there are times the air turns near white with cold . . . a fog that wants to be snow . . . no wind and a tense stillness that is a reminder of old sci fi movies.

The streets are haunted: empty stores call out the names of ghosts and their histories and the histories of the yellowed weeds coming up through sidewalk cracks.

The umber/ash windows ask for the provocation of God, as do the insects and rodents living behind them. I think God will love us when there is time and foundation for love.

For now, love lives in malls and oil fields. Time continues its comedy tour. Best to search for the future in plants and flowers. Look to La Vergine Delle Rocce* to find predictions and portents.

The future is only this: the sun dropping sadly on short-lit days, the moon a belly of non-belief, and the tarnished stars sweeping over all we feared, all we ever hoped for.

* Painting by Leonardo da Vinci: The Virgin of the Rocks, c. 1483-86, oil on panel, 199 x 122 cm (Louvre, Paris)

The Day The Clouds Were Grieved

Dark red and purple–new bruises in a sad sky

Scribble of light blue runs through It hopes, hopes immeasurably

Therefore let the moon Shine on thee in thy solitary walk; And let the misty mountain-winds be free To blow against thee

“Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour. July 13, 1798” —William Wordsworth

1 From Tabula Peutingeriana (medieval copy of Roman map): “in his locis scorpiones nascuntur”–used to signify dangerous or unexplored expanses in imitation of the medieval practice of putting dragons and other strange/mythological creatures in blank areas of maps.

2 Catherine Walters was a beautiful fashion icon and English courtesan who did not retire until she was 80 years old. She did so with both money and a favorable legacy. Born in Liverpool, England in 1839, died in London in 1920.

Acknowledgements

Grateful acknowledgements to the editors of the following magazines where some of these poems first appeared:

“Catching Light” Journal of Applied Poetics, Issue 16, 2016

“Aubade” In Between Hangovers, 2017

“Bethel” Luminous Echos Anthology (Into the Void Magazine) 2017

“Help Line” and “Spillsbury Curse” Two Hawks Quarterly June 2017

“Me and Tiresius” The Los Angeles Poets Society, June 2017

“Not Hovering” Words Dance, June 2017

“Mid-Morning, Minnesota” Fish Food Magazine, 2017

“What Fredi Said…” Visitant Magazine, September 2017

“Lagoon,” “All Day the Sky . . . ,” “Waiting for the Big Blue Bus”

Inner Child Press - The Year of the Poet IV, September 20107

“Four in Praise of Navel-Gazing,” “Posers,” “The Day The Clouds Were Grieved,”

“Before Sleep” The Blue Nib, November 2017

“Winter Damages” Crack The Spine 2017

“Smoke from the Fire One State Away” Heron River Review 2018

“Porch,” “Courting Wonder” Zingara Poetry Review 2018

“Treadle” Mused Magazine 2017

“Waiting for the Big Blue Bus on Ninth and Grand” North of Oxford 20108

“Wild Chamomile” Poetry Quarterly 2018

“Lavender Blue,” Narrative Northeast

“Beyond Temples,” Your Impossible Voice 2018

“Sherpas,” The Transnational 2018

“Do Not Doubt That I Love This Life,” THAT Magazine, June 2019

“Upstate New York,” Torrid Literature Journal, Torrid Literature Journal Volume XXIV

“Proselyte,” “In These Places, Scorpions Are Born,” “Freshet,”

“Catherine Walters–Like Lake Water,” COG, Issue 16, November 2019

“Sadie’s Scare, THAT Literary Review #5, 2020

“Quieter,” “In The Course of Human Events,” Assisi: An Online Journal, 12/2020