Between the Devil and Deep Blue Sea
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
Reefka
Watercolor
STEVEN P. SCHNEIDER
May 19, 2020
What I am learning about grief . . .
A sadhu in saffron robes who walks the streets of New Delhi
Has no shelter or food to eat.
A rickshaw driver who lives out of a garage has no passengers to bicycle around,
Only empty pockets.
Though neither you nor I are homeless or hungry,
We come to the arroyo for a respite.
We hold each other closely and look up at two ravens circling overhead,
Walk to the Ponderosa Pines that form a shelter,
Lean up against their cinnamon-barked trunks and close our eyes.
It is still spring, spring is still here
Though it feels like the sky is caving in:
The fruit sellers and fish peddlers in Seattle
Have shuttered their stalls,
Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.
We look for signs of hope:
The Yucca plant on the hillside
Stretches its pointy sword-like leaves upwards
And will one day flower into song,
The dark blue berries ripen on the Rocky Mountain Junipers.
STEVEN P. SCHNEIDER is Professor of Creative Writing at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. He is co-creator with his artist wife Reefka of the traveling exhibits and books Borderlines: Drawing Border Lives/Fronteras: dibujando las vidas fronterizas and The Magic of Mariachi / La Magia del Mariachi. (see www.poetry-art.com ) His poems have been featured in The Texas Observer, NPR and in American Life in Poetry. He is the author of four collections of poetry and three scholarly books on contemporary American poetry and is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters.
REEFKA SCHNEIDER is the creator of the art work in the highly acclaimed ecphrastic books and traveling exhibits Borderlines: Drawing Border Lives / Fronteras: dibujando las vidas fronterizas and The Magic of Mariachi / La Magia del Mariachi. Reefka’s art work has been published in Writing Towards Hope: Human Rights in Latin America (Yale University Press) and many prestigious journals. She has had exhibitions of her work throughout the Southwest, including “Dreamwalkers” at the Michael McCormick Gallery in Taos, New Mexico, “Ekphrasis: Sacred Stories of the Southwest” in the Obliq Gallery in Phoenix, Arizona; “Daughters of Juarez” in the Parks Gallery in Taos, New Mexico, and “Borderlines” at the Brownsville Historical Museum, Texas.
