The Miracle of You by Gabriela Marie Milton in English & Spanish #poem #poetry

Dear Readers,

I am developing a new project that will further promote the writings of our literary community. It’s an extremely demanding and complex project, and I am very excited about. New updates in a month or so.

Furthermore I am preparing a new book; an English-Spanish bilingual edition of my poems. The poem below, The Miracle of You, is included. I hope you enjoy the English, as well as, the Spanish version.

The Miracle of You

the moon’s right-hand
pours soul into my flesh
pigeons’ wings bring scents of lilac blooms
the air gets drunk with poetry
statuary women of the water
flaunt their hair

within the loneliness of you
my heart
rotates five equinoxes on a wooden spindle
your eyes pour flesh into my soul
my body germinates the sounds of growing leaves
I wash my hands into the waters of Guadalquivir
in the scented night of those who never sleep
I say
I love you
and in one single breath
our wedding is transformed
in an enraptured death

Fuiste tú el milagro

La mano derecha de la luna
vierte alma dentro de mi carne,
los aleteos de las palomas traen aromas de lilas en flor,
el aire se emborracha de poesía,
imaginarias mujeres del agua, sirenas,
alardean de cabello.

Dentro de tu soledad
mi corazón
gira cinco equinoccios cual uso de madera,
tus ojos vierten carne dentro de mi alma,
mi cuerpo germina los sonidos de hojas que brotan,
lavo mis manos en las aguas del Guadalquivir
en la perfumada noche de aquellos que nunca duermen.
Digo
“te quiero”
y en solo un respiro
nuestra boda se convierte
en un morir de éxtasis
¿Fue la luna?
¿Fue el aroma de mayo?
Quizás fuiste tú el milagro.

Good luck to everyone who starts school or whose children are starting school. The summer is about to end in the Northern hemisphere.

Gabriela Marie Milton
Pushcart Prize Nominee
#1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:
Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women (ed.), Experiments in Fiction, 2022.
Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose, Vita Brevis Press, 2021.
Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, Vita Brevis Press, 2020.

[From my poetry collection Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose.]

Between the bed and the window, in that space that smells roses and rien que pour toi, the morning lets her hair down. She is so close that I can reach her skin with the tip of my fingers.

I know … his book and the fame it brought him. The book in which he made me – the me that he imagined – the main character.

He was fascinated by the purple of my makeup and the yellows of my cobra, who used to erect the upper portion of her body to greet him every time he visited.

I do not know what demons he tried to exorcise. In the heat of those summer afternoons, he used to sip his sangria and attempt to find almost religious justifications for what he called my ecstatic existence; an existence populated with the richness and succulence of the Mediterranean literature and void of bullet points.

His acute shyness and his need to overcome the incapacity to love beyond nightly adventures used to ring in my ears like some unhinged marimba lamenting the loss of a pipe.

The dress that I wear in page twenty-seven. That dress and the heart-shaped red stone pierced with a hole for the suspension I used to wrap around my neck. I found that stone in a churchyard.

I was too young. Perhaps an older version of me would have made him a better writer. Do not laugh. You are too handsome when you laugh.

In the end, he managed to do something special. He invented the name of a perfume and made me wear it on every page of his book: rien que pour toi. I hid his book somewhere in the library. Yet, every morning, in the space between the bed and the window, it still smells rien que pour toi.

On August 2021 Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose became a #1 Amazon bestseller. My deepest thanks to everyone who bought my book.

#1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:
Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women (ed.)
Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose
Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings

Nature Speaks of Love and Sorrow, by Jeff Flesch, is a superb collection whose pages are saturated with poetic intelligence. The author builds a magnificent correspondence between the natural realm and the spiritual one, without making use of language techniques most symbolists employ(ed), preferring the un-revealed/the unknown to the revealed/the known. In Jeff’s poetry nature does not need any intermediary to speak to the soul and vice versa.

Nature has always provided a feast for senses. In this collection nature provides more than the aromas of daisies and lavender, or the silhouette of the willow tree projected against the sky. It provides a journey of self-discovery which ultimately leads to a better understanding of the self.

The message is clear. The more you understand nature, the more you understand yourself.

I dance to the tune of the moon/learning more about nature/and the aspects/of self/hidden under the trees in bloom/

The identification of the movement of natural elements with love is one remarkable element of Jeff’s poetry.

while I sit and I listen/to the clouds bursting wide open:/a deluge, like the love I feel for you/

Sometimes nature plays a restorative role and other times it becomes part of the author’s sorrows: pebbles always underfoot, while salt/ stings my eyes/always being told boys don’t cry/ pain is deep… or/and part of his love: finding the center/of a love both soft and cherished//as apples bow trees/ know that you always have been true to me:/

In the last piece included in this collection we find one of Jeff’s beliefs which serves not only as a closing argument but also as a direct way a expressing the idea that time heals everything.

At the end, we set sail on the winds of time/and let go the pain we’d held inside.

I find it interesting that despite the restorative capacity of nature, and its intimate link with the human soul, the ultimate healing does not come from nature. It comes from time. A change of perspective that adds new depths to Jeff’s book.

Nature Speaks of Love and Sorrow is an astonishing collection. Jeff’s poetry not only delights the soul. Equally it delights the intellect. It is a must have. No one will regret reading it.

Gabriela Marie Milton
Pushcart Nominee

#1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:
Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women (ed.)
Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose
Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings

Gustav Wertheimer – The Kiss of the Siren , Public Domain

Who Am I? published first by Shabd Aaweg and republished in my book Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose.

For five times in twenty-four hours, I face in the direction of the sea.

The first time the morning star floats above the water as innocent as the breast of a young girl. Soon the sun will try to catch her naked and burn her skin. She will escape. Pigeons will carry her across the sea. She will melt into yellow waters. Her last rays will fall in my lap like feathers.

I will rejoice.

The second time, divorced from her night bed, the light disperses itself on the shore. I can see myself washing clothes in the sea. My hair is tied in a ponytail. I am barefoot, and my dress is rolled up. The skin of my lips is cracked. I bleed. The clothes I wash smell cedar and spices. The shadow of a seagull positions itself on my forehead. The sea reflects the twelve signs of the zodiac. I can see no relationship between my destiny and that which I do. I am scared.

At noon, the sun kneads the waters with rapture. Shells shed pearls on the shore. My own rational thought leaves my body. I delight in the waves like a gazelle in the grasslands. I feel the movement of the water on my skin. Its cyclical quality sends me in a state of ecstasy. No, it is not the ecstasy of Saint Teresa of Ávila. It is something similar to a soporific trance. I am dead, and I am alive at the same time. I come from the sea. I return to the sea.

In the afternoon, my rational self awakes. My mind spreads its wings. I get preoccupied with verbs. I set one triangle in the normal position, and I invert the other one. I bind them together. I make myself a dress from pieces of paper inscribed with old symbols. Oh, femininity! You are the goddess of vines, the mother earth, the chalice, the blood, the fertility of the womb. I mull over these desperate efforts to equalize the feminine with the masculine. There is nothing in these symbols that points to the intellect of a woman.

In the evening, the sky stretches itself from blue to dark violet. The silk of the gloves hugs my fingers. I feed my iguana with cookies soaked in champagne. She hisses at me. I open a package of silk stockings. The door opens by itself. You step in. I stare at you. You are in by your own volition. One kiss and you borrow my tears. One touch, and I borrow your pain. A passage rite. I keep a coffin adorned with lilies in my bedroom. I sleep besides death like Sarah Bernhardt.

Did you hear that noise? A rosary fell from the Spanish chest.

The wind slips between the petals of a rose and opens it.

Who am I? If I knew, I would tell you.

Did you say you love me? The twenty-four hours are up. Nobody is facing in the direction of the sea anymore.

There is no me.

Gabriela Marie Milton
#1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:
Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose
Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings