{Tue 17 August 2021} Freed Spirit: a tiny big story

Freed Spirit: a tiny big story

An abandoned paragraph

Looking for stories, I came across a tiny standalone paragraph in my unpublished drafts. I remember that I wrote this in response to a “fictional stimulus” exercise during my MA, so it wasn’t the result of a visitation by any Muse, just a reply to a prompt (probably an image).

Yet, today, it feels fresh and full of inspiration. It speaks to my longing to escape the intense confinement of Covid restrictions (which have been especially strict in Ireland), and to find the freedom to move and regenerate. Here is my original text:

The garden breathes; absorbs me. The smallness of walls evaporates as I run free and fly upwards through the tree. I clamber, but fly, with each seeking-for-handhold sure and sprung, full of the energy of homecoming. I am a sprite, like Ariel released to his natural element, with no service required for the next few green hours.
Tia Azulay, 2009

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{Sat 24 March 2007} Green thoughts in green shades

Today, I was thinking of changing my presentation theme; then I remembered this stanza from Andrew Marvell’s poem The Garden that was a favourite of mine at varsity:

Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less,
Withdraws into its happiness :
The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find ;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas ;
Annihilating all that’s made
To a green thought in a green shade.

In many ways, this is what I’m doing on this blog, I guess, so I think I’ll stick with the green shades! A friend last night suggested that I was possibly being a little over-enthusiastic in my intention to post something on my blog every day (a not-yet-achieved goal), and I do confess that the blogging I’ve done so far has possibly taken up a tad more of each day than I originally intended, but I hope that the annihilation of all that’s previously been made will make space for green thoughts that are fertile and bursting with life and potential! Meanwhile, in the other room, my hubby is creating far other worlds and other seas in Second Life… sigh… is that where all cyber roads eventually lead? An alternate reality?

For the whole poem, go to this lovely site: http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/marvell/garden.htm

Tia Azulay 24Mar07
Copyright © 2007 Tia Azulay

{Thu 15 February 2007} Twilight Goodbye

Twilight Goodbye

There was such a wonderful sky tonight. Cocooned in your car, I could not conceive the coming parting. It came swift and unthought—a door opening and closing on a highway; the pull of traffic demanding your attention and drowning out our promises. But, as you disappeared, the suddenly unglazed freshness of the rose-hued sky swept into my senses. I reached up instinctively to embrace it, and it took hold of me instead, making my feet mercurial as I danced homeward, balanced on a godly whim. When I let the road turn me from those caressing clouds, it pointed me to a pure, bright moon, perfect, waiting for me under winter branches, anticipating the dusk. A cool thrill of joy tremored in my spirit and recalled your still, deep presence to me.

Tia Azulay 06Aug89-06Jul10
Copyright © 1989, 2011 Tia Azulay
For Anthony

{Wed 14 February 2007} Time Travel

Time Travel

I climbed a long road to a seat in the cloud
Where I watched soft wings beat butterflygold
Across the valley.
Stirred, I sang out for the brush of their beauty:
Might their velvet powder melt merry with mercy
My frozen cheek?

They gambolled in glory, made love to the light,
Wove wandwarm with wonder their way within sight
Of my shady seat.
I longed for their dance, but my shadow held still,
Undefined in the cool, yet preserved in the pull
Of old destiny.

Now it seemed, from the shade, if the line of the sun
Would advance, yes, invade, then they too would come
And gentle me.
Yes! They surged, saviour-sweet, but spattered their dust!
Against Time’s transparent fear-fortress they crushed,
Oh! lavishly.

And sundials spun and seasons were spent
While vision staggered through a veiled instant
Of disbelief.
Soulshaken I shivered: in shadow they’d gone;
My own scornful shade, surreptitious, slid on
Insidiously.

Half-blind I resigned to the dark of the hill
Allcompassing me in green-gathering chill
Persuasively.
But the finger of noon forced a way through the leaves,
My shadow surrendered and the butterflies sneezed
This close to me.

Tia Azulay 22Oct91-14Feb07
Copyright © 1991, 2007 Tia Azulay

{Tue 13 February 2007} Psalm 42 Revisited

Psalm 42 Revisited

“As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, O God.”

My soul writhes
over dust-dry land,
sucking promises
from air long dead;
desert-crazed,
visionary,
dazed
with longing,
longing.

My thirst bursts
through aching earth,
batters
desperate
banks.

Desolation wilts
as desire swirls
into nostrils
and ears,
sweeps me aside
into eddies of abandon,
plucks me back
into the choking
swim.

Dormant soil burns
my groping skin,
flows
through claws that gasp
for your eluding
jugular.

I am drowning
in the lack of you.
Your great
otherwhereness
engulfs me,
twists my grasping tongue
till blood flows;
I swallow
my own life-stream
which mirages yours,
O image-maker of whom no image can satisfy.

The above poem responds to: Psalm 42

{Sun 11 February 2007} whirlwind visit

whirlwind visit

pattering, spattering rain races mission-bent to earth,
alert, seeking, challenging for territory,
it sprays grass and laps up dry land
as poppies pound and skip incorrigibly
to tease its watery muzzle.

today, our trees seem not so much
at mercy of the cavorting current
as at play with it;
dancing, dodging, mocking
leaves laugh out loud
at its tail-chasing;

the old bluegum,
bowing gently to humour
the bristling threat,
lets it sniff around awhile,
then shoos it out

and, with a tailwisp wag, it
whisks over the hedge:
we are unscathed,
but thrilled,
alive.

{Thu 8 February 2007} Eye Storm

Eye Storm

Autumn thickens till the hanging days
Are changing past my window like a scream.
This winter thought too early paralyzes.
My aching eye gazes green — gold — gone.
The glazed day whips into strangeness
And lunar laughter rises, suddenly strong
As tears of light fade behind this skyline,
Mocking the blush on another hemisphere.

At last, rain churns across the glowing rim,
Tripping and falling on silver rooves,
Dappling darkness; moon glooms under cloud.

Under cover of cloud, night writhes,
Pierced by a star, and dies, weeping,
Into grass new-strewn with beauty quivering.

Freed Spirit: a tiny big story

An abandoned paragraph

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