half way

 “are we there yet?”

they have no concept of time

at this age.      they built a camp

and hide there, under the airplane seats.

half way in the air

me and my daughter,

nursing red wine in plastic cups,

one kind for all,

makes life simple.

drink it or not

we read Chekhov,

one story at the time,

taking our turns.

migraine.

half a time

before landing

c:Nina K Orlovskaya 5/28/2012 revised

morning

a foggy morning,

fragrance lingers

over the cold faces of the flowers,

a breath of night,

condensed

in trembling tears.

the rainbow

trapped in a drop,

like a kiss,

bottled the bubble of time


c: Nina K Orlovskaya @5/23/2012

Elisabeth.

That night was busy in the hospital. I was giving a prep bath for an 80 year old woman, before open heart surgery. She was a nursing home resident:  no family, no friends.  Her mind was lost somewhere in dementia land. 

She repeated one phrase “I will die tomorrow….” 

“No, you will not!” I said.

 “How do you know?” she asked.

 “How do you know, you will die?” I replied.

  Nursing time is limited and my therapy session was over.

About one week later, I was admitting a patient, Elisabeth, from the Intensive Care Unit, after open heart surgery. As I leaned toward her, holding the stethoscope to her chest, she grabbed my hand and said “I didn’t die, as you said. I believed you.” I was speechless, my words got through to her, even though her mind was ravaged by the dementia.

c:Nina KO 5/18/2012

fragments

words,

         those little pebbles,

you are playing with,

sink deeper and deeper,

in my mind,

with each landing

c: Nina KO @5/18/2012       

one time in the clouds...

 at the times, when my eyes  were too short to touch the tops of the trees,

and the dog’s eyes were  towering too high to look into,

only the chickens, those strange creatures,

looked at me from the same level,

with the one eye at a time. a fascinating perspective,

I tried to master it, but all my attempts failed.

…tired, disillusioned.  

one time,

I even laid down on my back and drifted into the sky  

with the clouds: tall, free, no eyes…

they lifted me high with their soft milky hands,

they told me about you, they told me that often

you look at them too,

from the land were the trees are short

and dog’s eyes  too low to look into.

and chickens? the clouds know little about those creatures,

but it was not important anymore

because

I found your eyes in the clouds.

we looked at each other

c:Nina K Orlovskaya 5/16/2012

a dance flows...

the scarlet path drawn over

the oak floors, over the white walls.

a dance flows through my veins

like the rain,

like the shadows through the night.

drops of silver, shivers,

at the edge of the blade.

the sword, an extension of your hand…

the rhythm grows deeper…

trembling wind shielding my face,

deep hollowness wrapped

around my heart.

we dance  

c: Nina K Orlovskaya 5/14/2012 (revision)

the time loops

 …one of my meditations suddenly drifted

 in to the strangest vision.

I found myself in the air, hovering over an unknown city.

I searched for someone familiar, a man.

 his voice was vibrating, trapped  in my head

and he was wearing a pink shirt.

I followed the echo…

    

the city was empty, he was nowhere to be found.

I panicked, extended my search

and found him back in time:        

pink shirt, 20 years younger, his smile,

other significant and less important things

 were radiating out of him like beams of light from a small star,

maybe a baby star….

he was wounded, unaware, bleeding

with that special kind of blood – yellow---

I ran toward him. at first, I tried to form

a time bubble around him, where I could snatch him

from the flow of time and patch

 his wounds, held him tight to my chest,

the kind of thing a mother would do.    

                               but then

 I remembered, I know him 20 years later,

 not bleeding anymore, healed his own way

with many tight scars, smiling most of the times

and in love with life.         

                  and I let him be,

because you cannot change the times ahead,

 that had already happened,

but you can change  the ones yet to come.

In a moment of weakness, I turned around,

looked in his eyes, and I was trapped

like everyone would be, who looks back…

I was mesmerized, drowned in his eyes, his smile…

we talked, and talked, and talked, we ended up knowing each other.

he was not aware that I was from the times ahead.

 I saw his scars, in the times ahead, they were getting soft and elastic,

as I held him close to my heart. and his presence once more,

in the times that were ahead were felt,  faint at first

 and then stronger with each  breath.

 I was waiting until it flooded

the streets of the city like before, 20 years in the past,

and we remembered

5/12/Nina K Orlovskaya 5/12/2012 

lost moment

at the moment

when a thought

becomes reality,

the light can see

the shadow,

it casts,

and magic disappears

c: Nina K Orlovskaya 5,11/2012

in my dreams

the water, the sky,

the melted rainbow

trapped in those eyes.

            hesitant, blind steps,    

I walk

to the bottom of the night,   

               deep…

my  breath is blue

like the dream of the morning

before awakening

c: Nina K Orlovskaya 5/9/2012

what is inside

the sound of a deep exhale,

for a brief moment awakens me

in the emptiness of “ haaa”,

the shadow of eternity dwells

in the darkness of my veins

blood flow,

terrifying “ahhhh” bounces inside

the elastic hollowness,

a humming bird trembles

within my solar plexus

still dormant, fragile

yet potent when drops the veil

when her wings touch the air

she flies

c: Nina K Orlovskaya 4/28/2012

memories

memories,
thorns          broken nights—
an orchard sprinkled with pink flowers,

so low        touching my face.

you said

“—they were meant to be there, 
the apple trees,

low to the ground,

at the stretch of your hand, 

petals are kissing your lips—“

I listen, 
I smell, 
I feel,

I taste the memory 
crunchy,       juicy, 
sweet—

the fragrance caresses my nostrils.

I miss that

5/5/2012 Nina K Orlovskaya

pep talk

my sister, she knows how to put a smile on my face

while patching wounds on my heart

she says

“you know, men are such clowns

at first

their mothers abandoned them

and then, they were left behind by the traveling circus.

as soon as they suck on your breast

they think  they are back home, in power,

playing drama in clown costumes.

what a laugh!”

she laughs.

I laugh.

and we sing Vladimir Visotsky  “look at those clowns”

c:5/4/2012 Nina K Orlovskaya

Dreaming within a dream (“Hedgehog in the fog” by Yuriy Norshtein, 1975)

the white horse of my dreams

floats over the milky fog.

a hedgehog drowns in the cloud

where shadows dwell.

a bat, an owl are flying by,

an elephant tries to walk through the wall,

crossing into the other dimension,  

 the sleeping tree

in its dreams dispersing gifts for the fog dwellers,

a pair of fireflies for the hedgehog to find the jar

with raspberry jam lost in a fog

meant to be shared with a friend

over a cup of tea, while counting the stars:

hedgehog to the left of the pine tree

and the bear cub to the right—

the white horse is chewing invisible grass

while the shadows prowls through the belly of the fog—

and then a dog, a real dog, runs

 into the hedgehog’s dream  to save his day,

dogs are always real, they are always there

 to save the days  lost in the fog, in dreams, in time ,     

elsewhere

or to rescue the jar with raspberry jam.

the bear cub’s voice echoes the hedgehog’s name in the fog.

some say the hedgehog  gone maybe 4 steps, maybe a few more

before he fell in the river, in its flow—

 it was flowing nowhere, following the Milky Way,

past the white horse chewing the invisible grass,

past the fog, past the sleeping forest.

the hedgehog’s fur soaked wet,

pulled him deeper into the river,

further into the Milky Way

 suddenly, from nowhere, someone polite

gently touched the hedgehog’s paw,

offered to take him to the shore.      

 the hedgehog

 thanked the gentle someone, who came from nowhere

and disappeared into somewhere,   

perhaps

to rescue another creature from the river    

or

the white horse from the milk of the fog.

the bear cub and tea were waiting for the hedgehog at the bank of the fog

the bear cub was talking, and talking, and talking

and the hedgehog was counting the stars quietly.

one must be quiet while counting stars

not to miss the white horse

©5/3 2012 by Nina K Orlovskaya

fragments (the key)

the key fit in the lock,
I turn it clockwise.
time left behind, world crumbled,
I am searching for familiarity in rubble.
I’ll rebuild it anew, again,
from the touch, the smell, the taste.
each time different
until I’ll get it right

 ©5/1/ 2012 by Nina K Orlovskaya