Hélène Cardona

From the Heart with Grace
 
Wind, who yearns to be tasted and absorbed,
offers me three cups filled with eternity,
twinkles of insight.
The timely encounter enraptures quintessential
distress, ruffles estranged quietude,
kindles a jeu d’esprit, glückliche Reise,
propels the fervent fragrance
of heliotrope, hyacinth and honeysuckle.
The tremulous hibiscus taunts me to warm climates,
reminds me I remain a thistle,
resilient, rooted in Mediterranean and Celtic fringe.
 
Do you remember a language older
than time, when a shiver down my mother’s
spine was worth a thousand words
and the melancholy in my father’s eyes,
reflecting Lake Geneva, was indecipherable?
There unbeknownst to me
in a world inhabited by swans,
I too would swim in concentric circles
to find the resonance of my core
and later discover that in dreaming
lies the healing of earth.
In dreaming we travel to a place where all is forgiven.
In dreaming is the Divine created.
 
And the great Oneness whispers ex-voto,
I am centaur by any other name,
I am griffin by any other name,
I am mermaid by any other name,
my raison d’être insubstantial, chameleon,
excavated like a talisman from a wreckage,
resplendent fresco
catapulted in the whimsical metamorphic frontier.
 
 
 
 
A citizen of the U.S., France and Spain, Hélène Cardona is a poet, actor, teacher and dream analyst. She attended Hamilton College, New York, where she also taught French and Spanish, and the Sorbonne, Paris, where she wrote her thesis on Henry James for her Master’s in American Literature. She writes and translates in English, French and Spanish and is fluent in German, Italian and Greek. She is the author of the bilingual poetry collections Dreaming My Animal Selves (forthcoming Salmon Poetry), Life in Suspension (forthcoming Tupelo Press) and The Astonished Universe  (Red Hen Press, 2006).http://www.helenecardona.com
 
 

 
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