Enga mellom fjella

Ripley Hugo's Balm of Gilead and my poem Onion

Onion

         for Brent Cebulla

Some day you'll grow back,
nourishing new skin, weaving a new cloak,
layer upon layer.
The winter will not chill you then.

Once you left,
shedding dead hide, peeling one layer at a time,
tearing away the old that clung
like memories.
You sought the new as youngsters often do.

"Someday you go back",
scrawled in black on this old park bench
where the green paint's peeled
back to tree bone.
One lonely omen.

So, you write
as writers often do
growing from within, shedding useless skin,
yet always rooted in the soil
where you've been planted.

© 2008 Kåre Enga [165.147] 2008-07-12

I spoke to weavers and a young man who was selling Camas, a local publication of prose and poetry at the farmer's market under the Higgins Street bridge over the Clark Fork River. We chatted and he mentioned that his surname is Polish for onion. I told him he might get a poem. After buying some feta cheese, I sat at a bench in Caras Park. "Some day you go back" was scrawled in black on bare wood. The poem flowed from these images.

ME:

Went to a reading and signing of Ripley Hugo's poetry at the home of Lois Welch up in the Rattlesnake. Very pretty area accessible by bus. I mentioned that I especially liked the poem where she mentions the Balm-of-Gilead (black poplar).

I love the part:

3

On that summer evening we agreed
your brother was old enough
to go to bed later than you.
he stood out in front of the cabin
in his new boots for long minutes,
and when I stood beside him, he told
me, "I need to be way out here when
dark comes. I need to see where
the colors go." He meant, when colors
go from the grass, from the stones,
when they drown in the water, go
somewhere they know but we don't.
"I take them inside me," I said.
He smiled, added softly, "And keep them
for morning, I know."

Ripley Hugo's book should be available on Amazon. A link to the publishers of "On the Right Wind":

http://www.cedarhousebooks.org/right_wind.html

Added 7/13: Ripley was married to Richard Hugo, who has influenced my group of 'letters/epistles'. She is getting on in years, so I was thrilled to hear her read. She's a native Montanan and her poems are grounded in the open landscape east of the mountains.

Met Professor Sharma ... again. And the Alaskan couple I met a couple days ago was there too. Nice time visiting folks.

Ripley Hugo reading her poetry:



Montana: 70 something at 21:00 and warm.

** Image ID #1295354 Unavailable **

6440