Sometimes a word appears and I fall in love with it immediately. This time the word is “chimera” or “chimaera”, defined as a monster of classical myth or simply a fantasy or dream. The sound of ki-mer’-a is perfect for placement in my poem about scenes reining in the underworld, or reigning in the underworld, depending on how I wish to use it.
In my dictionary, chimera lives beneath the word “chime,” the sound of bells and harmonious music, and above “chimichanga”, a deep fried flour tortilla with guacamole and salsa. Chimichanga brings delicious memory with smell of fresh green chilies, a food truck in Taos! Chime reminds me to check my Insight Timer app and find that I can join the 2,790 people all over the world currently meditating out of the 380,028 meditations recorded today.
Back to the present, I delight is sharing the stanza where chimera landed.
None of us know how chimera reins in the underworld
Solid as sequoia wrestling with stormy elements
A thin glass prism zipped in a pocket
Traps my wallpaper map of gridded city pages
Chimera came to me out of a newspaper column. How was I to know its serendipitous power! A quiet moment, however it may be embraced, is a way to play with words and let them spice the sounds of writing.
I’m still working on this poem with a thankful heart for inspiration from Adrienne Rich and parts of “Shooting Script.”
Poems of Cynthia Frezek were recently published in Captured Moments, An Anthology of James City Poets. She is a member of both poetry and prose writing groups in Williamsburg and recently retired from a long career in clinical nursing and nursing education.
