Alicia Viguer-Espert, born and raised in the Mediterranean city of Valencia, Spain, lives in Los Angeles. A three times Pushcart nominee, she has been a featured poet at numerous venues within the greater LA. Her work has been published in Colorado Boulevard, Lummox Anthologies, Altadena Poetry Review, ZZyZx, Panoply, Rhyvers, River Paw Press, Soul-Lit, Amethyst Review, Odyseey.pm, Live Encounters, and Spectrum Publications, among others. Her chapbooks To Hold a Hummingbird, Out of the Blue Womb of the Sea and 4 in 1, focus on nature, identity, language, home, and soul. In addition to national and international publications, she is included in “Top 39 L.A. Poets of 2017,” “Ten Poets to Watch on 2018,” and “Bards of Southern California: Top 30 poets,” by Spectrum.
The melancholy of this dawn at the beach has filled my eyes with sand. The tears inside the gin-and-tonic taste of the sea and of the kisses you have not given me. The breeze, perhaps from the Peloponnese, carries alegria, red wine and memories of our youth. Soon water will gleam with that sun which rises for everyone, though it does not warm us all the same; sometimes it illuminates, others it encourages, or burns. In minutes this liquid surface without waves will be tinted with the color of Homeric wine, just before, like in a feast, the full spectrum of blues and turquoises enters the scene.
I hear background music, but not our music, that one is already gone, like these seagulls flying away to another coast. It is possible that this sea I love so much knows my name and will remember it for eons, even when my skeleton, resting under its crisp waves, forgets it.
on the wet sand
nostalgia writes names
tides of time erase
To The Old Pine Tree
Like then,
enter my eyes, oh light!
illuminate the path to return home,
point at the old pine tree with your luminous fingers,
the vast universe of its foliage,
the shades of its ancient leaves drunk with chlorophyl
and the darker veteran ones already harden.
Show me the road embroidered
with violent reds from poppies, nightingales’ songs,
like then.
To find you, pine tree
I’ll focus my melancholic gaze
on the mystic milieu of this tempestuous shore.
I know that tomorrow
when the ancient guitar player of the wind strings
the musical instrument of your branches,
I will inhale your spicy fragrance, music of my childhood coast.
Light, return to my eyes from distance and time,
join me, undress the shadows,
let the aroma from my old pine tree guide me to my home’s center,
like then.
Previously published by Live Encounter in a modified version
For other contributions by Alicia Viguer-Espert, please follow the links below:
- Those Other Afternoons by the Sea …
- Autumn Light in El Andalus …
- Pinus Halepensis and Photons …
- Mediterranean Rain …
Poetry in this post: © Alicia Viguer-Espert
Published with the permission of Alicia Viguer-Espert