Personalized Poetry: "Irrigation"
Typewriter Poetry, Issue #002: Today's feature is a Personalized Typewriter Poem called “Irrigation,” written for Mimi, a tech sustainability expert.
This past month, I've been honored to craft lovely letters, stories, poems, & words for some incredible individuals.
I'm highlighting a few of those gifts here, every Wednesday.
Today's feature is a Custom Typewriter Poem called “Irrigation.”
Several years ago, I attended the Canoga Park Art Walk with my cardboard Free Poetry sign & a lawn chair. It was full of other Valley creatives—mainly painters, graffiti artists, & bands—which I loved as the Valley often gets a lot of disdain from non-natives moving in to the “cooler” parts of LA.
I attended regularly as a vendor, & ended up writing several poems for the same people year after year. One of my favorite regular visitors, Renée & her son, Javi, would stop by to wait in long lines, staying until after dark when all the vendors were packing up, just to receive a poem.
The three of us recently reconnected over email. Renée had seen a post on the Typewriter Poetry Facebook Page where I talked about the Poetry Care Packages I had been sending out around the world.
She requested five Custom Typewriter Poems as gifts to her family for birthdays & graduations. One of them in particular was a poem for Mimi, her niece & Javi’s cousin.
Mimi currently works in tech, helping companies improve their sustainability. This was something that caught my attention immediately, as Wired recently published an article on Sustainable Web Design (& how minimal code can help cut down one’s carbon output). She studied Atmosphere & Energy Engineering at Stanford, which sparked a wave for the poem.
With Father’s Day on the way, I circled back to memories of last autumn, when my father was still alive, & my daughter had yet to be born. “Irrigation” was influenced by a specific patch of land in the garden, where my mother & I planted bulbs in late September. While several months pregnant, I decided to use my father’s old breathing tubes & my mother’s old rain barrels to create a self-sustaining rainwater & graywater system that would water the bulbs through a do-it-yourself drip line irrigation.
I placed the rain barrel as high as I could, so that the breathing tubes would then slope down at an angle before watering the patch of land. The gravity gave the water the force it needed to run—but I couldn’t figure out how to keep the force going without manipulating the tubing with more air.
These thoughts of air & water as fundamental building blocks for all of life guided me as I recollected symbols which, at the time, were mundane & insignificant. I think back to those green breathing tubes & marvel at the poetry of life. My father’s favorite instrument was the saxophone; he stopped being able to play it once his respiratory system started to fade. The beautiful circle of breath being given & taken away—our need for water, for air—this poem is a tribute to those elements, how they interweave & play with us, how dependent we are on them, how often we take such simple things for granted.
Here’s “Irrigation” in its entirety. I hope you enjoy it.
IRRIGATION
Last autumn, I collected bits of rain
to irrigate a small patch of land
beneath the stairs. I channeled it
through a thin piece of tubing, recycled
from my father's breathing machine
before he passed away.
With summer's heavy heat upon us,
I like to think back to that season
of fruitful rains, each drop
channeling breath,
all of our systems
simple: just
water & air
passing through.
--billimarie
june 24th 2020
Thank you Renée, Javi, & Mimi for your part in this story. & of course, thank you to my mother for that special plot in the garden; thank you to my father for spending those last few months with me, & for waiting to meet his granddaughter.
With Love,
Billimarie