She feels connection with a flower
that floats unplanted,
without soil or roots, a ghost,
with a fragile existence,
choosing to remain unseen,
content to be found
opening its white petals
like leaves of a sacred book,
more air than matter.
She is not the kind
who prefers solitude,
still, like the Ghost Orchid
she finds herself floating
between before and after,
waiting, not to be found
but to find for herself
a place for new roots.
ost Orchids
Several years ago, a friend told me that she was she was reading The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean, book which tells the story of the poaching by plant dealer of rare orchids called Ghost Orchids that he planned to clone and sell. I had never seen a Ghost Orchid, did not know that they existed. I looked up the plant and became fascinated with this flower that is aptly named because its white flowers have a vaguely spectral appearance, and they seem to hover without roots in the forest due to an illusion created by the leafless plant. Thus, the orchid became the metaphor for my book - Ghost Orchids. The first poem of the book defines this metaphor. The "She" of the poem is, of course, the author who prefers not to use the first person in this book.
She Introduces Herself
She feels connection with a flower
that floats unplanted,
without soil or roots, a ghost,
with a fragile existence,
choosing to remain unseen,
content to be found
opening its white petals
like leaves of a sacred book,
more air than matter.
She is not the kind
who prefers solitude,
still, like the Ghost Orchid
she finds herself floating
between before and after,
waiting, not to be found
but to find for herself
a place for new roots.
The poems tell the story of changes in my life, my husband's death, my decision to move from Vermont, our home for 25 years to Northampton, Mass, where my youngest daughter and her family live. In the first section, I introduce the speaker's sense of loss and stagnation, her inability to write, her grief for those who have died, in the second, she begins to fight off depression, and in the third she explores a series of changes and what they mean. The fourth struggles with her role as ghost orchid, and in the fifth she begins "to find new songs (poems), the comfort of color, the sixth section, and in the seventh she has found new roots, a new home-
as in the last poem she writes:
her poems are
a scroll of written worlds
of yesterdays and tomorrows,
she can keep these roots.
This book is a story of a loss and change, of leaving a place I loved, the loss of my husband, of the home we built together, of how leaving behind the world where I belonged for so long, was a terrible loss, of how difficult it is for one who is now 84 , to begin a new life, to belong to a new community, to make new friends, to feel at home.
It is the writing of this book of poems that has helped me to find comfort and challenge in my new roots, the new built from the world of my past.
that floats unplanted,
without soil or roots, a ghost,
with a fragile existence,
choosing to remain unseen,
content to be found
opening its white petals
like leaves of a sacred book,
more air than matter.
She is not the kind
who prefers solitude,
still, like the Ghost Orchid
she finds herself floating
between before and after,
waiting, not to be found
but to find for herself
a place for new roots.
ost Orchids
Several years ago, a friend told me that she was she was reading The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean, book which tells the story of the poaching by plant dealer of rare orchids called Ghost Orchids that he planned to clone and sell. I had never seen a Ghost Orchid, did not know that they existed. I looked up the plant and became fascinated with this flower that is aptly named because its white flowers have a vaguely spectral appearance, and they seem to hover without roots in the forest due to an illusion created by the leafless plant. Thus, the orchid became the metaphor for my book - Ghost Orchids. The first poem of the book defines this metaphor. The "She" of the poem is, of course, the author who prefers not to use the first person in this book.
She Introduces Herself
She feels connection with a flower
that floats unplanted,
without soil or roots, a ghost,
with a fragile existence,
choosing to remain unseen,
content to be found
opening its white petals
like leaves of a sacred book,
more air than matter.
She is not the kind
who prefers solitude,
still, like the Ghost Orchid
she finds herself floating
between before and after,
waiting, not to be found
but to find for herself
a place for new roots.
The poems tell the story of changes in my life, my husband's death, my decision to move from Vermont, our home for 25 years to Northampton, Mass, where my youngest daughter and her family live. In the first section, I introduce the speaker's sense of loss and stagnation, her inability to write, her grief for those who have died, in the second, she begins to fight off depression, and in the third she explores a series of changes and what they mean. The fourth struggles with her role as ghost orchid, and in the fifth she begins "to find new songs (poems), the comfort of color, the sixth section, and in the seventh she has found new roots, a new home-
as in the last poem she writes:
her poems are
a scroll of written worlds
of yesterdays and tomorrows,
she can keep these roots.
This book is a story of a loss and change, of leaving a place I loved, the loss of my husband, of the home we built together, of how leaving behind the world where I belonged for so long, was a terrible loss, of how difficult it is for one who is now 84 , to begin a new life, to belong to a new community, to make new friends, to feel at home.
It is the writing of this book of poems that has helped me to find comfort and challenge in my new roots, the new built from the world of my past.
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