My Dear Readers,
I would like to share with you a fabulous story of friendship and beauty. Several months ago, Virginia Mateias, a Romanian-Canadian poet and journalist, sent me a poem she wrote for me. She entitled the poem, “When an angel becomes unhappy.” I was touched. I was in tears. I read and re-read the poem several times.
After a while Virginia wrote to tell me she sent the poem to a fantastic Japanese painter – Hikari – to make an illustration for it.
Soon after, while traveling in Europe, the art of Hikari came to me in an email. It was a time of gratitude, and a time to kneel in front of friendship and beauty. It was a time of silence.
Below please find Virginia’s poem for me. The featured image belongs to Hikari whom I’ve never met. I hope one day I will get to meet her and thank her personally for her beautiful art.
When an angel becomes unhappy by Virginia Mateias
On a long winter afternoon
The woman with a childlike laugh
Told me
When an angel becomes unhappy
and collapses
tuberoses grow on earth.
Wrapped in loneliness
She suddenly conceded
Half of her sky
Of such a deep blue
To me.
With the strength of a rock and
With the delicacy of a tuberose stem
She analyzed the distance between
The soul of a child and the horizon line
The distance between the collapse and the rebirth
Cover yourself with the blanket, she said,
By night we will be drinking stars.
Bios
Virginia Mateias is the result of two cultures and draws her creative inspiration from her European roots and her North American perspective. Passionate about almost all art forms, she published two volumes of poetry: “The Persistence of Memory “and “In the Shadow of the Angel.” Her poetry has been called by literary critics “original and unique”. Her poems share the three fundamental values: truth, goodness and beauty. Virginia loves nature, travel and all the little things that give life beauty and meaning. She tweets at https://mobile.twitter.com/mateiasvirginia.
Hikari is an award winning Japanese painter. She lives in Tokyo, Japan. In 2022 she was recognized during the Grand Prize Exhibition of Platinum Art Association, and she exhibited with Jiyugaoka Gallery. Hikari’s art is inspired by the spirit of Japanese Nohgaku, one of the traditional styles of Japanese theater passed down from generation to generation for more than 650 years. In 2001 Nohgaku was proclaimed by UNESCO a “Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.” [https://www.unesco.emb-japan.go.jp/htm/nogaku.htm]
About her passion for drawing and colors Hikari says that she “would like to convey a beautiful world in harmony with nature through the gradation of colors and the pattern of the costumes.” You can find Hikari at https://twitter.com/hikari2162554
An interview with the Nobel Prize Nominee Gaetano Camillo was just published in the Literary Revelations Journal. You can read it here: https://literaryrevelations.com/2022/11/07/interview-with-gaetano-camillo-nobel-prize-nominee/
Have a wonderful week everyone.
Gabriela Marie Milton
Pushcart Prize Nominee
Award Winning Author
#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
