Growing Paradise and the Process of Life

Remnants of May 12, 2014 storm

Today, paradise lost seems suddenly found—not so much a place as a process.  Green blades of spring grass thrust themselves through a foot of mountain snow and I fall back in love, all over again, with the process of life.

Matt Lambert with 4-day old Carly Rose

Only a few days ago I held my first grandchild in my arms.  Later, I watched my son cradle her in his arms for hours, enraptured, lost in the fleeting twitch of each newly found and endearing expression. Carly's newborn sleep seemed ripe with discovery.  What’s this? A smile? How pleasurable!  Newborns, the breath of heaven.

Paradise—not a place but a process—the intricate regeneration of hope and desire.  How carefully Carly’s mother grew her, each morsel eaten nourishing the soil in which Carly’s life took root, one eyelash at a time.  Nature makes this growing seem effortless.  Green grass sprouts beneath a blanket of snow and we hurry past, rarely awed. We read a poem so fine it takes our breath away, yet we rarely contemplate the effort expended for each word to find its way onto the page.

Growing Paradise by Ann Filemyr

What an anachronism, in this digital age, to find a hand-bound book of poems like Ann Filemyr's GROWING PARADISE  (LaNana Creek Press, Texas) —each stitch pulled taut by human hand, each illustration painted in vibrant color, each word a seed, each seed a poem, each poem the pulsing poet, laid bare. 

LaNana Creek Press director Charles D. Jones

Books such as these become literal works of art yet how easy it is to forget that the process itself is an art form.  Easy to forget, also, that no matter how lonely and frightening the process of creating is, we never ever create alone. There is sunshine and rain and the grand turning of the seasons, all in cahoots, all dipping their sticky fingers into the great cauldron of creation.

Big Horn Mountains, Wyoming

Driving home to Colorado from Montana after welcoming Carly into the world, we passed herd after herd of cows grazing the spring pastures with their calves.  On the ranch, I used to love watching the older cows take turns babysitting the calves.  When the calves tired of their playful bucking and chasing, they would settle down forming an impromptu nursery, lanky legs curled under them as they napped under the watchful eyes of a few older cows.  The rest of the herd wandered away, grazing far afield until intuition (and full milk bags) drew them back to the fold.  The calves would awaken and leap to their feet, ravenous, alive, eager. 

Fine press tradition of LaNana Creek Press

To be engaged in life is to be a part of this ongoing, never ending process.  It is to see ourselves, and our works of art, in relationship to the world around us—not isolated, not solely the product of our own creative efforts but intricate parts of the greater whole. 

Each of the 19 poems in Ann Filemyr's collection Growing Paradise begins with the image of a fruit and then ventures out into the larger world.  “Peach" begins with these lines...

Near the cliff dwellings in Frijoles Canyon

where the Cochiti lived before Spaniards brought peaches

in the time before she knew what she wanted

she changes

                        water to blood to milk

for the fertile moon has already touched her

The poem ends, asking this question... 

What is this incredible sweet flesh

This tenderness? This delight?

                        We make it ours

in the verb and tongue

of that doing, for she is now

                        bent to birth

breathing every shade of light

                        pulling

from the heart’s dark passage

                        as peach trees

flowering all around her

                        push life

Daughter-in-law Anna Lambert with Carly

And so it is that while we labor with our own private endeavors, the peach trees flower and the grasses grow and paradise is both lost and found.  Inspiration comes to us in our dreams and we tell our stories and in so doing, life regenerates itself.  Sons become fathers and daughters become mothers, and somewhere in between there is the artful coming together of heaven and earth. 

Poet Ann Filemyr

NOTE:  Ann Filemyr, author of GROWING PARADISE (LaNana Creek Press, Nacogdoches,Texas) is currently the Academic Dean at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  The poems featured in Growing Paradise are available in Ann's collection The Healer’s Diary.  Ann's most recent book Love Enough is available from Red Mountain Press in Santa Fe.