(This column was first published in the July 1, 2002 Buffalo News.)
Cascadilla Creek is a major stream that originates in
the hills east of Ithaca, flows down through the city and finally empties into
the south end of Cayuga Lake. The hills among which it originates have typical
local-sounding names: Baker, Hungerford, Hunt, Snyder and Turkey; topped by a
radio tower another is assigned the rather grandiose name, Mount Pleasant.
It is a lovely creek -- I recall passing it almost
daily one summer when I taught at Cornell -- and it enjoys a delightfully
euphonic name that does indeed trip lightly off the tongue.
An Ithaca poet, Zorika Petic, evidently thinks well
of this stream too for she has titled a collection of her poems simply Cascadilla Creek. The 88-page volume is
published by Kearsarge Mountain Books. I'm not a regular reader of poetry, but
I found these verses charming and certainly befitting their attractive
namesake.
Ms. Petic is an astute observer and recorder of
nature in fragments like these, the first from "Child Half-Asleep on a
Farmhouse Breeze":
sumacs
next
to my window,
their
antlers of
velvet
and lace....
from "Summer Morning":
Three
of us chase an amber
day
into the valley,
to
the basswood groves....
from "Spring Marsh":
Stars
and a few raindrops
swim
on the marsh.
Peeper
bells ride the breeze....
And from "Star Genealogy":
Bent
by the north
gusts,
the starry
diamond
hoots of
great
horned owls.
Star
oceans ebb and
flow
on the
outer
banks of earth....
She can also construct an interesting story. Here is
her "Skinny Dipping":
Long
ago
a
friend and I skinny
dipped
in a creek, because
the
creek asked us to.
By
a deserted railroad track.
The
rumble grew closer,
and
before we could modernize,
a
freight train passed
within
judgment.
The
shame over nothing
had
arrived;
we
knew it and could laugh.
Louise
is gone.
I
can still turn to the scene
and
draw from it
two
young girls
in
young water splashed
under
a clean sky.
And here in her title poem the stream turns her
thoughts inward:
On
days I'm feeling modern, I throw a glance
at
Cascadilla from the safety of my home.
into
its life means leaving me behind,
maybe
for the final trip.
Minus
the shell
of
thought, how do I keep from fusing
with
the creek, its ripples scarcely concealing
the
rainbowed yet nameless fish, the rocks
privy
to millennia and still no word,
the
feathery hard‑earned mud, the oak leaves
at
the bottom adding their wine, the distillings
drawn
as if by magnet away, until they among
countless
theys merge at last with the lake.
What I found most remarkable about these beautiful
poems is the fact that English is Ms. Petic's second language. Like Conrad, she
embarrasses us with her ability to handle her adopted tongue. Here she tells us
a little of her tragic childhood in "Going Alone to America After World
War II":
A
ship, or fragment of dream, carried us through
the
enormous waves. Each person was alone.
My
father gone, every relative except my mother;
my
mother mostly gone. I sensed the divinity
that
preceded green, when emptiness was its ruse....
I commend to you this lyric poet whose thoughts about
nature and deep ideas are expressed in attractive and accessible
verse.-- Gerry Rising
Note: Three additonal poems from Cascadilla Creek together with attractive illustrations are to be found at the Gloria Mundi Online Journal website. From there you can also find ordering information, if you choose to purchase this book through the web.