Lover De Plus

By Sarah Margaret Jespersen

The tangled skein of love and relations are featured in this second volume of poetry by Saraj

"Saraj verbalizes through her poetry the turmoil of love in a dream that is her reality."Rufus Tiefing Stevenson CEO, JAH KENTE INTERNATIONAL, INC. Curator, The Tiefing Collection

"Sarajs mastery of words and images comes not only from an insightful mind but a heart open to the human condition. Her imagery draws deeply from nature, using it to paint pictures of profound emotion." Ann Elizabeth Houston Actress and teacher

"Sarah's poetry has most usually moved me to tears. It is haunting in its depth, spiritual in its insight, and loving in its profound pain." Dr. Kresten Jespersen Librarian

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jun 20, 2011
• ISBN: 9781450247962

Sarah Margaret Jespersen

Sarah Margaret Jespersen, a.k.a. Saraj Margurilleat, was born in the hills of Mandeville, Jamaica, on June 13, 1950, where she lived her early childhood. Educated in England and the United States of America, she traveled in Europe as far east as Kriti and The Cyclades, and hitchhiked across America to the West Coast and Mexico. Besides teaching in the area of Special Education and being a Certifiied Early Childhood Teacher, she has worked as an Assistant Administrative Secretary and Receptionist at The National Geographic Society. For a number of years she was a member of a troupe, The Sankofa Players, in a Performance Arts Show, Redemption Ritual, and a grant writer under the auspices of Jah Kente International, Inc. Her first volume of poetry, Dedication de L'amourwas published in 2009. This volume,Lover de plusfeatures her unpublished early poetry set within the covers of more recent poems. She lives in Washington, D.C, where she has resided for 33 years.

Book preview

MAKE HEARTH, TAKE BREATH

Going Home

And they rose up towering over me

gigantic and grave

Years after, still a forest in my mind-

tall, thick trees on a menacing bank of hill

Overpowering in eerie quiet;

hidden from sound

claustrophobic—stifling

no where to escape to

It was hard not to be paralyzed

by the threat of pain

I was not going to renunciate, self abnegate

what I found in lonely terror

was that I wanted

something to hold onto

And sibling saplings

with trunks slender as ropes

in between the massive trees

Urged me to grow;

pushed me up from being injured

to being insured a climb

pulling me out from this hollow in the woods—

Dark womb where I was re-routed—

when the sky peeked through only gray

pale at times, mostly harsh and gravelly

I determined not to be blocked forever

blinded by walls I couldn’t whitewash

Bleeding heart, you are part of me, my flesh

of a wound carved from loss and rejection

Cleansing itself into a grimacing scar twice over

with shuddering tears and still hanging questions:

Do I want to go home and bury myself in asphyxiation?

And, why God, did you give me impenetrable wood

to teach and guide me by?

Now, I can’t change or complain about

the cure of a mighty struggle

with father and mother

That gave me strength to strive and survive

by which, I, intensely pine to persevere

for good comfort

yen for a gentle, clear touch of peace

in ongoing upheaval

And demur to an undying need

to harmonize in a hymn for redemption

8-’09

Blithe Welcome

When I returned years after

to visit my kindred spirits, Da and Ningy

I sat in between them

in the back of the taxi from the airport

they held each of my hands

in both their hands

the whole way home

At sunset they opened an old trunk

and memories came flying:

my gauzy fairy-wings and starry wand

my ruby earrings

a sparkly bottle labeled ‘Sunshine’

a tin of pink, baby-ear shells from Treasure Beach

trinkets I remembered—a blue heart

and a ‘bluebird of happiness’ in a white plastic cage

childish drawings of Bible ladders

and wavy lines scribbled in tiny notebooks

envelopes of ash blond curls of baby hair

tied with scrapes of ribbons

Memories came flying in a whirl of silvery moonlight

and, sweet Jesus, lilting lullabies rocked my cradle

I felt as if my coffin had been opened

and my fosters’ were bending over me

still browned from the Jamaican sun

Ningy, smelling familiar of parfum—Evening in Paris

Da, rubbing my back and arm with the hand

he’d cut his thumb half-off

splitting a coconut by a machete

murmuring, ‘my lickle’ love, eh?

I felt resurrected

‘We thought you might have changed’ they told me,

‘but you haven’t’

‘tears just dripped from our eyes for weeks and weeks

when we lost you’

I was, now, taller than they, and it made no difference

their hair was several shades grayer

and the deepened wrinkles were but a pucker

of the sweetest love

‘I didn’t want to go’ I sobbed, as I choked up

the remainder of homesickness

My world was blown away one day in childhood

a bomb

Numbed, it took me years to realize

my notes can just blow away

so can I pipe a song again

a call back from where they’ve been?

And can I always spread a little bit of happiness which God restored to me?

8-’09

Breathless

What provides my soul

that I tried to make a heart and home with love?

Languishing on my bed so long

for want of my mother’s righteous love

I should have prayed to God above

while hidden in between clean, white sheets

(she, so faithfully, laundered remote as the moon)

transferred me in plainsong,white as snow

as exiled, lonely Chang-O

But it was an oracle of a table bare of comfits

no soft pillows or fluffy quilt to fill

an unrequited love

I resolved to be a sacrifice pure

for the sorrow I endured

to seek holiness, and to be purged

for my heart and soul were but an empty pit

I couldn’t dismiss

In thirst, I wanted more

and ran away to another part of the sky and earth

to seek and find for sure

to show and tell my pilgrimage

Through ellipsis of ‘falling in love’

believing in ‘once upon a time’

a fairy-tale wonderland

-I fell down a rabbit hole

and was cloaked in the underground

The twist is that my soul was confused

I did not want to be promiscuously raped, for real

to love them and leave them

to be used and abused

Now, at daybreak, I watch the sky fill

through the space of branches of furry pine

in the shape of a foaming bottle

as the orange, rising sun spills

over the horizon up a neck of light

dispelling the dark, cold-blue residue

of salty dawn

From the bottom of my heart

even though my soul is weary and worn

I can mend a tear and cry for what I missed

and smile in lingering hurt

for now, my mother has gone

briefly celebrate, in memory, for my mother’s grief

modestly fluttering her ample, soft bosom

that revealed the worth of her heart

she had long ago concealed

And Bless God

she was forgiving in return for losing me

9-’09

Breathtaking

Did I drink from cups of illusion

floating in blue powder of shifting sand

over a bower tasseled of dune grass?

My sphere fizzed as I lay

love only a whirling memory

as distant as surf steadily swirls my footprints away

in the captured shadow of a lost intimacy

Left outside your enchanted laugh

apart like a ring broken in half

-as close as our lucid eyes fixed in a bruised moment

on eternal pools—as hypnotic as the wet, clinging skirt

of a pearl diver brought ancient tears

I loved and feared you in the pull of tides

-You, who folded me loosely in an envelope

(a curtain of mist sprung like a silver screen

beaded with rain)

-urgent prayer to God, telegram my heart beats to all the same

to not let me wander into the salty marshes

as the wayfaring sun comes down upon me burning harshly

Grief is not forever-a promise bound to stay

to peel that rind and membrane of a citrus slice

finding in dazzling embrace a section pulpy, wet and moist

If you should leave me—is my love for you not deep enough

for how long have I sensed your destiny of starry dreams

that I want you to fulfill-it truly seems

‘even if you exclude me’ echoes a lonely, sandpipers trill

in background spray of