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A Literary Blog

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I am a writer based in New Jersey. I have a Bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and a Master’s degree from the University of Toronto. I have experience as a German to English translator, a technical writer, and a grant writer. In my writing, I explore myth, legend, and languages. This blog is devoted to my past and future writings. – Johanna Rodda

  • The Diamonds, or the Green Pendant



    One day, in the afternoon, two weeks after Christmas,

    as I am busy preparing to go out, when I have

    put on my favorite outfit and will go to a cafe

    for a few hours, writing, I am faced with a decision:

    to wear the diamond necklace, or the green pendant.

    The diamonds have much to recommend them.

    They play in series, tiny little sparkling slivers

    down a thin, twisting platform of rosy gold

    that merges with a strip of silver.

    The necklace is only half an inch high,

    delicate all along its length, and small.

    I bought it as a Christmas gift for myself.

    The green pendant is lovely in a different way.

    It is not so delicate, not so elegant,

    but more substantially smithed.

    The green enamel, rich with a design

    drawn from the Book of Kells

    is set in silver in a pattern like a teardrop.

    A gentle Irish tear!

    Because my father gave it to me for a Christmas

    that still lingers heavy in my mind, it is special

    to me in a way that the diamonds will never be.

    A long time I stand and stare at the two pendants,

    recumbent atop my dresser, in front of my mirror,

    next to the tubes and the compacts of makeup

    I have just slathered onto my face.

    Each necklace speaks to me in its own way.

    The choice before me: will I be elegant, delicate, keen,

    with the diamonds dripping from my neck,

    or will I wear the green pendant my father gave me?

    I stand long weighing the two options,

    deciding on how I want to present to the world,

    who exactly I am.

  • In The Realm Of Morpheus



    At night, when I lay down to sleep

    and dream, dreaming, I am in Shangri-la.

    A castle. Enchanted forest. Endless sea.

    Or maybe, my self, flying through ether,

    jetting around like nothing.

    I plumb silent seas, course out

    to the Venice of my dreams, an island.

    Wondrous, the realm I am in then.

    Or perhaps, in dreams, I am just the poetic artist.

    I capture life with my every stroke,

    the pen of my mind capturing life

    in all its ever-wondering complexity.

    Writing a verse. A story. An epic

    that curls and curvets through mythic dreams,

    reaching far, far from sea to sea,

    of such moving power as to move

    the very ground of Morpheus on which I stand.

    Or, maybe I am just in fact the epic,

    my story the great history of all the world –

    ranging far through and on and past mountains

    with peaks like birds’ beaks, reaching high,

    perhaps on foot, or maybe I fly again:

    the best epic dreams are those I spend

    with some other, sharing the glorying feeling

    of having scaled my own Everest.

    And wake up the next morning knowing it.

    In dreams, I am a castle-stalker.

    A tightrope-walker. I seize this life

    and what it offers, with never a thought

    that that is not of what my waking life really consists.

    Waking in the morning, I open my eyes –

    the hardest thing, sometimes, to ever do –

    and see tendrils of sunlight fighting their way

    into a once-dark room. Vestiges remain.

    But, the story I write in dreams, is just

    too little beyond what my mind can recall.

    I do not surrender, neither to the skepticism

    of conscious thought, nor to the sensuousness of sleep

    but live in between, in a world of waking wonder.

  • Through Air Most Idoneus



    At my desk I sit, and I stare –

    the wings of birds so idoneus,

    as they flit through the air,

    curling and curveting, light and thin,

    resting gently on a feeder

    outside the window of my room,

    no bigger than half my palm:

    I could hold them and feel no weight.

    Watching them, out is in.

    There is nothing between us,

    no glass, no space, no air;

    those wings, as they course

    from the feeder up, up in the sky,

    are my own wings, myself,

    lifting me high above the things

    that are my life, the daily routine,

    the in-and-out and constant motion.

    And I am with them. I fly away.

    As I am one of them,

    I both admire and am beauty:

    my lightness, fast my form,

    soaring, sweeping, seeking on high

    the glory feeling of being

    no larger than half a palm.

    I range from tree to tree

    and there alight, weightless as I am,

    looking out on vistas bare and bright,

    lissome and free, and living

    as I curl and curvet

    through fulsome air, lighter far

    than anything Man can conceive:

    I am – those little birds –

    flocking outside my window –

    flecks of beak and wing

    so glorious in the bounty of nature.

  • Cross Stitch



    There is a gentle kind of love

    in the ritual and the routine

    of drawing thread through fabric,

    in and out, lax and taut,

    like the ebb and flow of life,

    to forge an image so geometric-perfect,

    thread crossing over thread,

    each movement of the needle slight and slow.

    In I draw the thread. Out I pull it:

    red, blue, black and gold, against a background

    of cream white Aida cloth.

    There is a little prick on my finger

    from where the needle has stuck me

    as it made its way through the fabric.

    Slim, the needle, like a laser into heaven.

    Like the eye of God looking down on Earth,

    piercing through the cloth, laying tracks,

    that together form the picture of the whole.

    Holding the slender metal I am mistress of the cloth,

    owner of the little world webbed into the canvas.

    Hour upon hour, I stitch and stitch away,

    patiently, as the picture comes together.

    I am sewing an ark, with animals

    on many different tiers in many different colors.

    What a menagerie is here!

    Casting my mind out as I wonder,

    I can almost hear the barking and the braying

    and the mewling, the cawing – just almost.

    The figures lift off from the page.

    As if by the breath of God.

    I will go on, and stitch the story

    that lives now on the canvas of the fabric,

    I mistress of the silken thread

    as it twists and knots, leaving traces

    that are the marks of this gentle kind of love.

  • Love Letters



    The first letter, short and sweet and easy,

    was written in a casual hand

    (like children in the playground passing a ball)

    just to say to a friend from long ago,

    Hey, how are you, what’s going on?

    And I had the letter from him, in response.

    The second took more care, more patience,

    more thought to frame exactly what I wanted to convey.

    I sat a little longer, considering,

    making the words casual, soft, slow:

    I thought of you today, at dinner;

    you really are the greatest poet I have known.

    The third I lingered over longer.

    I considered and crafted, to make it ideal.

    The whole was growing more potent;

    also more precarious: as if one word out of place

    would make our whole relationship topple.

    So perfectly I crafted the letters –

    at the same time, full of longing:

    I thought of you today. And a thousand things

    I have wanted to say to you for long

    I will try to convey in these words I write …

    The fourth letter took longer still.

    Not yet had I said just what I wanted to say.

    We did not use that word – so potent

    it was in my mind, though; and if in his,

    I did not, could never know, I guess,

    except to look back on our letters –

    letters of longing, letters of luck, letters of –

    The fifth letter is yet to be.

    Any word more I write to him

    would compromise me in my very self.

    To say the word I most want to say –

    how can I? Is it not obvious to him?

    Yet do I have to write exactly that,

    exactly what I want to say –

    would he not know if it were said in tangents?

    If I were to write it,

    I know just what I would say.

    Yes – this I would say in a letter,

    who cannot say it to his face,

    and would let the words work there

    a few moments, striking a chord

    if they may.

    But maybe these words are best unsaid.

    Maybe it would be too much a risk

    to thus lay bare the contents of my heart.

    For words become (at some time) actions.

    If ever I see him again, my phantom interlocutor,

    maybe I will say to him what is felt –

    or else go on forever, never spilling, never saying

    the love I wanted to convey in those letters.

  • My Irish Ring



    It isn’t gold or the One Ring.

    I doubt it has value at all.

    I found it downtown in an Irish store,

    in a bin of jewelry marked down.

    I combed through the jumble to find it.

    It slips on my finger just so.

    On the face of the band,

    there are holding two hands

    with a heart in between them on top.

    The band’s made of silver,

    the hands are of gold.

    I love it now, I’ll love it till old

    am I, and every day,

    it will crown my finger

    and with me will stay.

    The little adornment, I do not begrudge

    how it slips on my finger, a gem and a mark

    of a beauty that goes beyond mere appeal

    of the ring with the hands

    and the light golden seal.

    A ring like all that have been smithed

    to lie on the finger of those who have lived

    from time before time, when rich was the scene

    and gold rings were given by king and by queen.

    When the art of the smith was prized above all,

    from the field of the battle to the golden mead hall,

    to tame the earth and all its resources,

    to mark the paths and also the courses

    of the purpose we call our own,

    and also divine: so hammered in metal,

    a thin golden line.

    Of all things of beauty, the ring I see best,

    being of circular, unending glory:

    from any one spot on the circle, the knot

    carries forth all the full story.

  • Medieval Codex



    An object stands in front of me:

    beautiful for me to see.

    Fine, with brown leather bound,

    golden tooling all around.

    Inside, the quires tightly sewn,

    folds and pockets that are shown:

    what genius has made

    the binding, quires overlaid.

    In some gracious abbey grounds,

    the writing in the book astounds:

    gothic in rotunda script,

    perfect letters capped and lipped.

    Meliora sunt ubera tua vino.

    Glad in writing once to show

    a love so deeply felt:

    love in Latin perfect spelt.

    In red and blue the floriation

    rounds out perfect the creation,

    initials square illuminated

    with bird and person historiated

    and vellum the medium where

    one wrote, side flesh or hair.

    Letters in a column bold

    to tell the story that is told

    and always to convey

    what happened yesteryear, yesterday.

    Knights and all their ladies fair

    striving to be everywhere

    the ones remembered long:

    a potent joust, a love so wrong.

    Medieval codex, I salute you.

    You have carried me through and through

    back to all those golden days

    which reading this book still conveys,

    bound with quires careful made,

    love well written and displayed.

    I will forever always need

    what lies in you still more to read.

  • Dove on a Stable Perch



    On the deck railing sat the dove:

    always and eternal symbol, love.

    And it imparted, as I started,

    to look: a coo full-hearted.

    But the dove was quiet, it was still.

    It was as if my loved one’s will

    had sent it to me, as if to say,

    “I will love you now, always.”

    And so, I let the little dove in,

    creature in which is no trace of sin,

    and allowed it to comfort me as it would:

    as such creatures always should.

    The dove, it stayed upon that perch.

    It did not sway, or in wind lurch.

    It just sat, as if to relay

    how that my love would with me stay.

    Columbus meus, I like to think

    in this world, so full, so pink.

    A little dove upon my heart,

    salving all the wounds that smart.

    So take me, my dove, away!

    Let me stand and pray

    for my for long departed dear,

    now and through my every year.

  • Graal




    When one day I went searching for the Grail,

    the cup, the chalice, to wash away my every care

    in life, I felt like King Arthur, whose mighty knights

    ranged far and wide for the healing, the paramount,

    the life-in-all-being, ever-eternal vessel, to give

    and grant them all they could imagine.

    I could not help but wonder, as I went searching

    in the pages of Chrétien, as von Eschenbach led the way,

    or the “pure fool” of Wagner was privy to the secret

    which most every person wants to know: maybe it was

    something in me lacking that led me to now and steadily seek

    this thing, never knowing, ever always hoping.

    One day, when I went searching, it was only because

    I thought there should be more to life

    than just the living: that there should be striving

    for epic fantasies to paint the way into the future:

    not to save myself, but sure I’d use it

    for good, and not lose it to the forces

    that set their courses to rule, and dominate.

    But in this, there’s something, too, a little false:

    to say a cup or chalice or pail, yes, indeed,

    even the very Grail, has anything at all that could undo

    all that life makes us endure: and, most of all, wield

    its power, a mighty shield against the breath

    of our greatest foe, the enemy, death.

    So, stepping out to find the Grail, instead

    of knightly bearing, I exude love, instead

    of holy lances, I have hope: and, of course,

    with such strength to arm me, how could it

    be otherwise than to be my very salvation?

  • A Masquerade Ball


    I entered the ballroom with single-minded purpose: I meant to have it out with her. Because of me, she would be an exile from her home and ostracized to a foreign land. To harbor such sentiments as she had is to commit treason toward all of one’s fellows. I was there not to reform how she thought, but to utterly destroy her notions, so grounded in the ideology that every thought she had and every move she made was a wonder and marvel of nature, that to me they seemed complete idiocy. I did not yet see her in the crowd of dresses, of which hers was certainly the loveliest (cursed be that it was a masquerade ball; everyone you wanted to talk to you couldn’t find, because they would not take off their masks), but I decided to try to find she who was the center of attention.

                I knew no one in the room: all her friends, as most in the city were. To them, she was charming; her friends and admirers brushed away her faults as if they had not been insulted by her.

                “But what had she done?” you ask. She was queen of a thousand faults, but, especially, she was the analog of Lucifer, rising high above the status quo. This had me ready to jump off the plank, if only, by means of the water, to find blissful separation from her. Maybe I should have given her the benefit of thinking her ill, but she had offended me too much for that. The argument for her sanity seemed to lie only with her own reasoning: with her so much above the rest, she must certainly know her own mind.

                I wandered through a sea of masks but could not find her. So good was she at hiding from those who did not think her the darling idyll of theirs minds, that in a crowd only her friends recognized her. I thought to ask where she was, but clandestine me could not do so. Still, I had to relay to her the anger to which she drove me, finding catharsis only in confrontation. I would reason with her, not for her benefit but for my own, because her soul could never be reformed. By turning her venom on me, she had chosen her company.

    I stirred through the crowd, a smile here, a drink there, some words you always say to people you meet. I looked for the crowd around her, people who did not realize she had offended them, too. I wanted to take her by the shoulders and scream, “Quit your childhood and wake up!” Did she not know that every word she wrote obliterated the boundary between what is decent and what is not? She should have had a sign reading, “Keep Away” on her mask.

                Did she simply believe that all that was, was a product of her mind’s intersection with some referential frame? Was she simply an inappropriately-tempered fool? Because who, being grown, does not know the basic rules of humanity?

                And then I saw her – of course the most beautiful woman in the room. I bypassed waltzing couples, moving right and left toward her.

                She was talking to a man. He was engrossed. I had expected her to be less steady, never content, always casting her eyes onto new quarries. But she was not; her eyes were constantly on her interlocutor. Still, I could not relent –she would certainly steal the heart of any man, then play with it before moving on to her next victim, leaving him crying and besotted on the streets. Oh, how I couldn’t stand her hedonism, based on some sickening perception of the world as founded for, by, and because of her alone!

                Her interlocutor left. She looked around, not at me at first, avoiding me. I did not pity her aloneness; we cannot buy friends. Finally she looked at me, then averted her eyes. I approached.

                “Hello,” she said. I nodded. She blinked, looked side to side with that self-assurance I had expected to find. She extended a hand.

                “I’m –  ” she said. When I did not take her hand, her smile faltered, as if I had told her exactly how I felt about her. She withdrew her hand; we stared at each other. I felt like the last sane person there, screaming to the crowd how unsubstantiated this woman’s empire over them was. But they flitted about, not knowing the insults launched at them – yet the woman and they were still friends, and –

                It suddenly struck me: where were my friends? Were they in the ballroom? Had I left them on the stair? Were they scattered through foreign countries? Did they think writing the most noble craft?

                And I felt something inside me that should not have been there: the subtle recognition of another’s sadness. I had only meant to inform her that I did not think all her methodologies were incorrect, that she had begun at a point sure to leave her with a Luciferian future, a sharp rise and a powerful drop. What was it? I could not go through with it; I wanted to say at once that, if only she just stopped trying, she would have the world at her feet, which would, also, have maybe assuaged her earthly pain.

                Could I say this, her mask distorting her nature, so striving, insulting the world as if she were the only one who mattered, her whole nature infuriating; and yet, her eyes – sad eyes, my own eyes, everyone’s – I did not tell her that what had made me so angry were her human eyes, on which mine now rested, she whom I had wanted to castigate for trying to rise too high, cheating on us who wanted to go the steady rather than the untenable route, but which now landed me fully in the inability, because of those eyes, to speak to her angrily of things I had perceived.