Dear Readers,

Please enjoy the following excerpt for this title. To obtain a copy of The American Poet Who Went Home Again  and read the full text of this creative nonfiction title, plus more than a dozen others please click here .

Aberjhani

The large brown envelope left in my mailbox

February 6, 2006, clearly contained an oversized book of some kind and I thought with joy that a publisher had finally delivered one of my long overdue titles. The first clue that I was mistaken about the book being one of my own came from the postal markings in Portuguese. My initial elation actually magnified as I realized it was a copy of the poet-photographer Joseph Randell Sherman and the poet Alexandra Oliveira’s sumptuous feast of a book, Universes Beyond the Visible ~ Elements of Dream, or, in Portuguese, Universos para Além do Visível Elementos do Sonho.
 

The date of the book’s arrival stands out for me because it marked the tenth day since my then gravely ill mother, Mrs. WillieMae Griffin Lloyd, had informed her family that she did not want to be force-fed because she knew food would not heal her. The most it could do would be to extend her agony rather than ease it with peace, calm, or comfort. Staring at the newly arrived book, and thinking of my mother’s imminent rise to higher spheres, I felt like a handful of cosmic dust floating between the shadows and splendor of giant uncaring galaxies.     
 

The book’s arrival date also remains significant because it showed up just as I was preparing to spend my third night at the Tara Nursing Home camping out in a chair beside my mother’s bed. The week before, I had enlisted the aid of Hospice Care workers to supplement the efforts of the nursing home staff by assisting in the management of Mom’s pain and general physical comfort. Because Mom had been suffering from a complex of illnesses that included renal/kidney failure, congestive heart failure, and degenerative arthritis throughout her body, the hospice officials had prescribed morphine to counter her pain. I was grateful to note how effectively the morphine erased the apprehension from her brow and the drawn tension from her shoulders. But at the same time, I was disturbed to see how the drug lulled her into a state that appeared very similar to a coma.
 

As much as I trusted the nursing home and hospice staff, it was impossible for me to leave my mother solely in their care when she was so utterly vulnerable. During the two years that she had been my military dependent in England, and the decade that I had served as her caregiver in Savannah, I had come to accept the possibility that escorting her soul to the gates of the spiritual universe may have been one of the principle reasons I’d been born. Immersing my concentration inside the healing creative energies of exceptional art and poetry had proven a powerful tool for coping with the debilitating stress of the caregiver’s path. Therefore, I was relieved that the book, Universes Beyond the Visible ~ Elements of Dream, had manifested like an angel or spirit guide at this particular time in my, and my mother’s, life. It would provide good company for both our souls.
 

THIRD NIGHT AT THE NURSING HOME
 

My brothers, sister, nephews, nieces, cousins, and friends were all at the Tara Nursing Home, gathered around Mom’s bed milling about the hallway when I got there around 8:30 p.m. As they prepared to leave and I prepared to spend the night, I sat in one of the lounges of the spacious facility. The place had been designed to resemble an elegant mansion from the movie Gone With the Wind and pictures from the film hung on walls throughout it.
 

Soon, my family had departed and I went to Mom’s room, which she shared with Mrs. Bell Rivers. I greeted Mrs. Rivers, who had a reputation for raising unlimited hell to get whatever attention she needed, then stepped past the curtain dividing the room to stand beside my mother’s bed. Several days and nights had passed since I’d last seen her eyes open or heard her attempt to speak. For that reason, I did not expect her to respond when I kissed her forehead and said, “Hey Mom, how you feeling tonight?” She never moved anymore, so there was no real need to adjust her covers, but I did so anyway. It was what I had done for years within our own home when checking on her in the middle of the night.
 

Satisfied that Mom was comfortable, I sat down on one vinyl armchair and propped my feet up on another. To my left was a large window that looked out on the parking lot and, in the distance behind it, a grassy marsh. I took the copy of Universes Beyond the Visible ~ Elements of Dream, from my tote bag and smiled at the deceptive simplicity of the book’s cover. It appeared, at first glance, as if the cover consisted of nothing more than the bilingual title, in black letters for the English version and aquamarine letters for the Portuguese version, spread elegantly across an expansive white background. Then, just as I started to open it, the light revealed several more words in subtly raised white letters surrounding the title. With my focus on the title itself, these white letters against a white background had remained “Beyond the Visible.” I saw now that they formed the words: “earth, fire, ar, agua, terra, fogo, water, air.” Intrigued by this stylistic ingeniousness, I lifted the dust cover to see what else might dwell beyond the immediately visible elements of the book’s surface. Lo and behold, the title and surrounding words––which I later would learn were section headings––were all engraved into a beautiful hard cover of pale pastel mint.
 

Beauty followed beauty as I replaced the dust jacket with all the geekiness of a bona fide bibliophile and began to explore the first pages of the book. I felt as if I were peeling back the layers of the hearts and minds of the book’s creators, Alexandra and Joseph, who collectively have made themselves known to the world as “OneLight.” Smiling, I read the short introduction describing the book as a kind of living vision revealed and evolving through the pen of the poet and they eye of the photographer. I nodded in appreciative recognition of Alexandra’s declaration: “Reading is a need, like breathing, writing is a lust, like living… through both I perceive and learn, always growing…” And I nodded again as Joseph described his photographic aesthetic as one wherein he attempted “to view my subjects from a unique perspective and capture extraordinary moments. I explore the world in a child-like manner in order to help other see it for the first time…again.”
 

I was thinking about the high level of artistic integrity and commitment required to achieve such creative excellence when a nurse entered the room to check on my mother. Because Mom was no longer taking in solid food or liquids, the nurses rarely had to do more than gently turn her from one side to the other, monitor her breathing, measure her blood sugar levels, and administer the pain-battling morphine. While they did these things, I often remained in the room and sometimes helped them. Or, sometimes, I would go outside and let the cold night air shock my thoughts and emotions into some kind of alignment.
 

Once the nurses had completed their tasks, I concentrated on the first section of Universes Beyond the Visible ~ Elements of Dream. Appropriately enough, it was titled after the invisible element “air/ar.” How, I wondered, did Joseph hope to depict this unseen element so essential to physical life in our world? The answer soon became apparent, or visible, as I moved slowly: through images of fields of clouds that looked like floating oceans, street lamps that mirrored the moon’s distant elegance, twin rainbows, sun-washed groves, and skies painted with the unspeakable wonder of their Creator’s will and desire. These brilliant images were positioned on the right hand page and often sat adjacent to a poem rendered in both English and Portuguese. Some, however, such as “Captive Moon” and “Lines of Dream,” stood only with their titles and allowed the eloquent vitality of the photographs to serve as the unseen lines of the poem.      
 

In this first section, the poems were not merely odes to air but lines that honored the element’s powerful validity with hymns to the life, impulses, colors, destinies, and possibilities that inhabit air. I marveled at the kind of philosophical nuance and meditative insight conjured by Alexandra in the poem, “With sun this time..”––
 

            “Once more
 

            in such clarity that smiles rise from the soul
 

            shaped and spirited as birds at play
 

            along links of sky with earth and past and upcoming today’s
 

            waxing and waning catches of the wind
 

            that some , who are not birds, call future
 

            and forget or forsake the flight upon, when it already is
 

            them, the wind, the sky and the smile, as one…”
 

                                                © Alexandra
 

The second section was titled “fire/fogo.” It captured, with uncanny depth, all the heat, mystery, color, and unpredictable kinetic temperament that gives fire its commanding personality. Of the twelve mesmerizing photographs in this section, only four were accompanied by poetry.
 

Looking at the pictures of fire, I sensed the energies of my own aura flare and waver about my physical form. It felt the way the flames in the photos looked, and it prompted me to examine the pulse in Mom’s jugular vein to make sure it was still there. It was. Even though I knew she would not be able to respond physically, I decided it might be a good idea to recite one of the poems for her. I wasn’t at all sure because the King James Bible was the only literature in which I had ever known her to express any real interest. My own works, several of which addressed her life, had never inspired her to comment upon them to me. Nevertheless, I decided to read for her from Joseph’s poem, “Music of God,” which contained this stanza––
 

“The Music of God
 

is a fiery spirit,
 

the rhythm in hearts
 

of all humankind.”
 

            © Joseph
 

What was I hoping as I read to my mother? That the sound of my voice would coax her eyes open? Or that the words of the poem would somehow help release her spirit from the confines of a body worn down by pain, medicines, and its earthly mission to accommodate the lives of numerous others?
 

Shortly after reciting the poem, I fell asleep with my head resting on a soft teddy bear propped against the side of Mom’s bed. Perhaps an hour later, I heard Mrs. Rivers in the next bed over making loud grunting noises. One of the nurses had left the dividing curtain pulled halfway back so I saw her struggling to sit up. A stroke had paralyzed her left arm and impaired he clarity of her speech but she never failed to get attention when needed. With her good right arm, she vigorously shook the railing on her bed as though it was a horse and she meant for it to giddy-up and go. She suddenly stopped shaking the bed as her gaze moved toward the foot of Mom’s bed, then slowly, slowly, turned in the direction of the hallway, staring at something I could not see. Unexpectedly, she called out, “Where you going?”
 

She was not, I knew, talking to me at all. Whereas I could sense my mother’s spirit moving about outside her body as it readied itself for departure, Mrs. Bell could obviously see it. Then she said, “Bye-bye. Bye-bye!” But the pulse still beating in Mom’s neck told me she would remain with us a little longer. For the rest of the night, I slept off and on as the nurses came and went, finally rising as the sun did the same. Kissing my mother’s forehead, I left to tend to business and personal matters only after my brother Wallace arrived to keep his watch throughout the day.
 

For the conclusion of VISIONS OF THE POETS, Part 3-A: Journey Through "Universes Beyond the Invisible," please visit the OneLight web site for Part 3-B of the story at: http://www.angelfire.com/art2/poetica000/visionsofpoets.html 
 

By Aberjhani
 

© 3/1/2006