DA8,3,80728,12C994IC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> Cezanne's Carrot - "My Window Unstuck" by Steve Trebellas

"OF WINDOWS"
copyright 2006 by TOM ROMERO

My Window Unstuck

A poem by Steve Trebellas

It took all night to get the window open.
It took prayers and wedges,
razors and curses,
but now it opens

and Everything changes—
the wind cries restitution,
boots the dust in cones and columns,
flags of the gone world whip.

Every loose or hinged thing snapping,
an ancient organ whines and bickers,
trees by the river back and spin
and what was out comes in.

Move Choir, resolutely toward the church.
Cassocks, chalice, cross—
a thin outline through dust—
the Virgin coalescing in slant morning sun.

Suspend—
dance on air, beautiful Latin children.
Every child a flower. Every child a rage, a rhythm
against the wind, the dust, the desert.

It took forever to get this window open.
It sang like Judas but it opened,
and what was out comes in.
The down-slope winds

push this Heaven through.

Steve writes:
This is, perhaps, my favorite poem. It's been revised again and again. Rodney Jones (SIUC MFA program) told me, "You've got it this time," but I continued to mess with it. I was "beat" during the time of its conception, living in a flop on East Larimer Street in Denver when rent and space were cheap. This was before oil money gentrified the whole town in the '90s. I had recently turned thirty and had no idea where my life was headed. A little further down the street was a huge and run-down Catholic church which was the spiritual home to the large Hispanic population in that part of town. The poem describes an "epiphany" I received upon getting the stubborn window open in time to see a procession headed toward the church. This, on a windy, early spring day. I didn't plan the metaphor and only saw it later. At the time, to convey the emotion seemed all that mattered.

Steve Trebellas is of half-Greek, half-Northern European descent, and his parents lived in many places as they plied their professions. His father was a civil engineer who wound up selling construction equipment, and later owned a repair/sales facility where Steve worked from the time he was eleven. His mother taught Spanish in the local schools. They absolutely did not get along, and Steve became adept at hiding and dreaming. As a young adult in the thick of the counterculture, he moved around, and avoided all efforts at settling down. Steve always made time for books and interesting people. This led him to the Naropa Institute in the early '80s—before they were accredited, and a seminar with Alan Ginsberg was only eighty-four bucks. Alan told him that he needed a conventional literature degree to aid his writing, and he began to take a class here and there, finally getting an undergraduate degree many years later. Steve went on to get an MFA, and is recovering from that now.

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