Scribo Scribere

A Literary Blog

recent posts

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

  • Light for a Lost Love



    Light for a Lost Love

    Because laying a light

    is the greatest form of kindness,

    I will lay a little light for you tonight.

    I’ve wondered long about the proper way

    to let you know, in your eternal absence,

    that I think of you still, and always will.

    The candle rests upon the window sill.

    I can see it as I sit in my favorite chair,

    in the living room; a tree stands by,

    with lights upon its every branch:

    because it is that time of year

    in which light tells us,

    more than at other moments,

    that we are beloved by someone,

    even if we do not know it,

    if they are not there –

    to fill our weary hours

    with thoughts of love,

    and to fill our longing hearts

    with food for the soul.

    The light burns still as I am in bed,

    with warm covers pulled over my body,

    pillows soft and plush; how can I say

    how much these little comforts

    mean to me now: and a light

    always in the window.

    Still, the light burns full on,

    even when the sun

    is large and radiant outside.

    And I wonder what the point of it is:

    to fill the day, then lay yourself

    for sleep at night,

    and do it all again tomorrow.

    When you were here, things were clearer;

    music was more throbbing,

    colors were more vivid,

    more contoured was the difference

    between right and wrong.

    We’d stay up late into the night,

    till moonshine blurred with the wishes

    we broadcasted to heaven.

    But, now, I set the light: it’s all for you,

    and burns brilliant in the crystal cutout

    of the window we used to sit beside

    when we were younger versions of ourselves,

    and would watch outside it the progress of life

    go by, and cast our wishes to heaven, where

    an eternal fire lay ready to receive them.

  • A Hart Leaping


    This love poem pays homage to the biblical Song of Songs.


    A Hart Leaping

    Leaving Eros’s arms was torture.

    Leaving yours, the whole world

    and all the manna of Eden.

    I sing of you as a hart in the hills,

    as a poet upon our bed of spices.

    You give me wine to drink

    and figs to eat, from the tree

    we planted together, in summer.

    When I see you standing tall,

    ramrod-straight as the Tower of David,

    I know I am protected, and loved.

    I am a beloved daughter of Eve.

    Together we planted our garden.

    Its sprouts can now be seen.

    But you went leaping into the hills tomorrow.

    You have not seen the fullness of our tree.

    I sing songs for you, to draw you back.

    I eat sparingly, to spare the food for you.

    I drink the wine we brewed together,

    hoping it will recall you to me.

    But your going was fated.

    I was always meant to seek you

    on the streets of the City,

    in the buds of our garden,

    in the hills you went leaping to.

    You were always meant to leave me.

    You are a hart in the hills.

    Can I not call you back with milk and honey,

    and all the manna of Eden?

    To think you will be forever gone to me

    sets my heart to aching,

    and makes me blend my tears

    with the wine we once drank together.

  • On Grief

    This poem is devoted to all those who have lost a dear loved one.


    On Grief

    In my heart is sadness supreme,

    yet Nature shows me other face.

    On grass I look, and a stream

    lightly fulfilling mortal race.

    I write some words so as to show

    I am still all here below

    while he is up above.

    In heaven is my love.

    And I look to find in the world

    some way to continue on.

    Maybe it is God’s standard unfurled,

    but I dream in verse and song.

    I will always hold inside my heart

    the joy his being did impart,

    and always will cherish still

    the wisdom he has given – and will.

    For I truly do believe,

    through sadness clinging to my heart,

    that others never really leave,

    but just to other realms depart.

    And so, I take a walk through trees,

    the freshness of grass, the hum of bees

    and do believe in my mortal mind

    what heaven really is like in kind.

    Yes, forever I will love him great,

    knowing that he had to leave

    but always Nature will show me how

    and proper way for him to grieve.

  • Lesser Leaf



    Lesser Leaf

    I make my thought of this, my own volition –

    whereby I know, wherefore, I mean,

    not without a heart to seem,

    not too far or near away –

    that is what I thought to create

    in this, my mind most animate,

    and creating, verily,

    made my ‘verse’s merrily

    enacted course divorce itself not from itself,

    but sustaining a better gaining

    of that blessed simulacrum, the similarity

    of that – this – the – singularity

    that is to me:

    yes, is even – in me, through me,

    joys me, every day it can,

    so that my variety of superimpositions

    upon this, my inquisitions,

    might show to what the end I seek

    (if end I possess the more)

    will turn – but yet I have none,

    no, no other, than it to find,

    my self, my soul, my stay, my self –

    resting lightly on the stair,

    slipping trippingly with easy lightness

    of brightness supreme, too canny, coy,

    too lightly woven, too far pleasing

    to be conceivable,

    though perceivable to some, I mean,

    and so deceivable in their indecision.

    But yet back to my elision, and to write

    of how, ‘til now, I’ve met nowhere

    a better verse or a better pair

    than that one that I’d find nowhere

    but in the unanimity of consanguinity,

    in, in brief, the lesser leaf

    of one who speaks to me in tongues,

    leading me up the ladder rungs,

    and to me solace brings

    in how birds – how they wing

    through air most idoneus –

    not to always say “I am sorry”

    and yet always to say it –

    to elide it with ourselves for whatever ill –

    still, ever, to think “Why? Why?”

    and into the night to cry for stillness,

    to smile at peace and pray for illness

    while always furthering gentle somethings,

    gentle someones, for the fear

    that we’ll not otherwise know

    how close it is, to come to all, to everything

    in this, our life, never to know,

    never to know, never to know

    that the brief intaglio upon a locked container

    of the ventaglio that is its maintainer

    is more beautiful far when seen

    by no others than the ones for whom it is intended,

    yet with always the hand ready to be extended

    to, yes, pick up the bottle,

    beautiful, truly, in its own way –

    yes, and even, and even to say,

    and even to think, believe it so,

    even without the strength, but faith to know

    and apt in verse – in ‘verse – in poesy,

    pure joy, pure free –

    that, that it could ever always be just so

    as to –

    be:

    this the beauty in which I stray.

  • How Much Is Another Moment Worth?


    This flash fiction piece ponders the question of material things versus more life.


    How Much Is Another Moment Worth?

    The first piece she gave away was worth more than most. It was yellow gold, with baguette diamonds in a figure-eight pattern. It was a wrench to give up, and no doubt. She had worn the beautiful thing a lot over the course of her short twenty-five years.

                But giving it away was not just for a good cause – it was for the best possible cause.

                Every fleck of gold and every speck of diamond bought her father another hour of life.

                She didn’t question whom she was giving things away to. He had appeared next to her father’s bedside one day, promising miracles.

                His price?

                The beautiful things the girl owned.

                She had always been something of a hoarder. She loved her gold and diamonds.

                But she loved her father much, much more.

                And so, when the hooded, cloaked man appeared by the side of her father’s bed and made the pact with the girl – her beautiful things for more hours of life for her father – she didn’t hesitate.

                She had soon divested herself of her two diamond necklaces, her diamond earrings, and several Swarovski pieces bought years before.

                And it had worked.

                The doctors said six months.

                It had now been ten.

                But now, she had no more beautiful things to trade for more hours of her father’s life. She met the cloaked, hooded man at her father’s bedside.

                She showed the man her empty hands.

                The man was not angry.

                That is not the way with Death.

                Instead, it simply came and claimed its own.

                In tears the girl watched Death carry her father away. At least the end was peaceful.

                And the girl was left with something much more precious than jewels. She had her father’s life, for as long as it could possibly be lived in this world.

  • Gelato Shop


    This poem was inspired by a gelato shop in Toronto.


    Gelato Shop

    I am walking down the streets

    I’ve always walked, for sweets.

    Through the downtown-filtered air

    streaming through my bob of hair.

    On my tongue the great desire

    for flavors that will lift me higher,

    high above quotidian me:

    flavors that are bold and free.

    So, let me come and stop

    by that peaceful gelato shop.

    Shall I savor straciatella,

    shall I call it bell and bella?

    Shall the flavor that I covet

    be of hazelnut what’s of it?

    There, too, is raspberry blue,

    shot with flavor through and through,

    and there’s pure chocolate overlaid

    on milk and sugar with which it’s made.

    Mint and chips are mighty fine:

    so is that the flavor that’s mine?

    I cannot decide: there’s the rub.

    Eating gelato’s better than grub.

    Cinnamon makes a pleasant change.

    Elderberry I think quite strange.

    There of course we have strawberry,

    amarena and the cherry;

    bacio, then, is like the kiss

    you soon discovered that you’ll miss.

    And that is why I’ll always stop

    in that delightful gelato shop.

  • What The Animal Teaches Me


    This flash fiction piece questions whether animals know grief, like humans.


    What The Animal Teaches Me

    Sometime during the night, the bird’s nest fell to the ground. When I came out of my room for breakfast, I saw it lying on the path that snaked through the quadrangle of the college. The toppled twigs, still caked together and cemented with mud, had three little baby-blue eggs spilling out of them, their viscous, yokey contents running all over.

    If seeing the nest itself didn’t make me stop, the sight of the mother bird standing there did. She was a bright, brilliant robin, one of the first I had seen in spring. Her body was all smooth, dark feathers, except of course for the flash of red on her front. She could have been any of us standing in some somber cemetery grieving over our fallen in battle. From time to time, a thin quail quavered from her beak as she looked on. It sure sounded like crying.

                The porter who oversaw the college came over from her office by the gate. She looked on with me, her arms folded in front of her.

                “Must’ve been the storm last night knocked the nest down,” she said.

                “Yep,” I said. The porter stood there for just another moment, then went off to get a box and a broom to sweep up the last leavings of the broken eggs, even as the mother bird stood looking over the scene with her dark eyes.

                For a few moments while the porter was gone, the mother bird and I stood staring at each other. Of course, it could just have been that she saw me as a random but pleasing configuration of shapes and colors, just a wave of energy through space that supplanted in her mind her recent loss. I wondered if she had already forgotten the tumbling of her babies down to the earth. Did she see the viciousness of nature in the act? Or even remember that it had happened at all?

                Soon the porter was back with the box. She had dug it out of the corner of her office, where, she said, it had been stowed a long time ago for just such a purpose as this. I helped her brush up the remnants of the nest into the cardboard, the little twigs settling there to rest – and to be easily disposed of. While we were doing this, the mother bird, planted squarely in the center of the flagstone path, watched us with a steely eye. So dark were her eyes. Perfect black, like night, absence of all color. Time and again she let out a trilling quaver of sound.

                “Guess that’s all we can do,” the porter said when we had finished the sweeping.

                “Yep,” I said. We stood there a few seconds in silence.

                “Gotta get back to work.”

                “Yep.”

                The porter left with the twigs and the caked mud, box in hand. I stood there a while longer, still watching the mother bird, who had remained steadily beside us as we swept up the remains of her babies, trying to invite some measure of comfort into her existence. From the way in which the robin cocked her head in her own, bird-like way of reckoning the situation, I thought that maybe she did in fact understand that I was trying to soothe her.

                The two of us held that pose for a long time. And yet, after a moment, I couldn’t help but wonder: Was it arrogant of me to think that I could impart to this creature anything she did not already know? In my tradition it’s said that God gave us the earth to watch over, including the animals that are on it. But I don’t think the birds or the creatures of any kind have ever needed us humans to tell them what to do or how to deal with grief.

    In the end, the robin ascended into the sky and up above, around the top of the brick walls of the college. As she flew away, I wondered if she would ever start another family, and if she would come to see those little ones hatch and thrive. I didn’t know if the memory of this day would persist for her, or if she would remember me as anything more than just an assemblage of colors at the scene.

    Did I bring any shred of comfort to the mother bird? And, if our roles had been reversed, would she so have tried to comfort me?

  • The Final Breath


    This poem expresses love and hope at the end of a long life.


    The Final Breath

    Once there was a man who thought he’d die

    if ever he stopped counting his every breath.

    With each beat of his heart –

    pat-pan, pat-pan –

    he heard the passing-by of his life.

    While he lay, dying, in the hospital

    (breath coming out-in, in-out),

    he silently considered the tragedy

    of his so mortal self; thoughts of days gone by

    in and through his reeling mind.

    No children he had ever had.

    No loving partner.

    His thoughts were not those of a man

    who had scaled mountains, gone into space,

    painted a masterpiece, kissed a lover.

    No; all the while he had sat mostly at home

    (with not another to warm the midnight hours)

    and counted every breath, every beat of his heart,

    bringing him swiftly through the years.

    Now he lay, and hoped the end

    wouldn’t come at last,

    that he could go on; so much

    had he gotten used to the passing seconds.

    And then – so unexpected, and rare, and wonderful,

    as if seeing up close a smile on God’s face –

    before him stood a woman beautiful and bright.

    She was no nurse – that he knew – nor a doctor.

    Her hair was a yellow crown that swayed when she moved.

    For a moment, spellbound, the man who had always

    counted his breaths watched: the woman smiled.

    My son – she said – do not be afraid –

    (and the man of constant fear breathed more easily) –

    I come from a place beyond all dread.

    I am sent to take you from this existence

    to where the light of life never dims.

    At these words, the fearful man saw

    a far, wide world open up before his eyes:

    its carpet was green, its waters were life.

    The man, rising from his bed, his hand

    within the woman’s, set a foot in front, one ahead,

    stepped forward a pace – one – then two –

    counted his breath, his heart: pat-pan;

    and, with the first planting of his foot

    on the foreign, perfect soil, the first intake

    of pure air in his lungs: look – the breath was unsung!

    he passed into that wide world.

    And what fear there had been in him

    was no more.

  • Chaucer on the mind


    This short short plays with Chaucer and Beowulf.



    When Chaucer becomes so much on your mind

    you begin to wonder where Chaucer went

    Ibsen left the books on the table in the library then skipped out. One book was green, one red. The green was Chaucer. On the cover was a seated scholar, reading a book that could only have been Chaucer’s too. The red book was Beowulf: no one knows who wrote that.

    Time was strange to Ibsen when he stepped out of the library under the trees, and from the trees off the curb onto the avenue, where others had parked cars, then forgotten them. Where are they, Ibsen thought. I do not know where they have gone.

    Ibsen had left the books because he didn’t need books anymore. There comes a point for everyone when she wakes up one day, realizing he knows Chaucer already. That every word Beowulf ever said is inside her. Ibsen could say Whan that Aprille, stellifye me, That King Priamus’ Son was of Troy. Exactly he remembered them. Chaucer really gets inside you.

    Ibsen stepped out, leaving green Chaucer and red Beowulf. If you go into the library, you will see them and understand Ibsen has gone somewhere time does not. Ibsen has gone where Chaucer went when he wrote the book he gave to Ibsen when he saw him on the avenue where the cars were parked which people had forgotten to get books in the library (both red and green), forgetting they no longer needed libraries as Chaucer was already inside them, and Beowulf would be on their minds until time stood still.

  • Devotion to Heroes – Part Two


    The following three poems are also from my collection “Devotion to Heroes.”



    The Poet-Artist

    Poetry’s a bumbling and a fumbling art,

    an art that’s finished before you start.

    It fits the shape of a container,

    on a page it’s the remainder

    of all the thoughts you’ve thought;

    it’s turning what you’ve thought to naught,

    then turning back again.

    It’s picking up again your pen.

    It’s writing after you’ve not for years,

    conceding all your most concealed fears;

    it’s fighting might and main.

    It’s writing for soldiers twain.

    It’s paying homage and writing odes,

    it’s bearing good names and turning toads

    into princes; its common task

    is to take from us our stoic mask,

    writing outside or in a chair,

    writing everything everywhere,

    every emotion of mortal part

    laid by every mortal heart

    to tell you of its pain, its love

    for things here and up above.

    The poet’s an adventurer

    who’s of love sound and also surer,

    who writes within the space

    of his heart, the face

    of this most immortal art.

    And so I raise my grateful glass

    to every poet now and past.

    From bards all down the line:

    grant that what inspired you might also be mine.

    The Astronaut

    There is no oxygen in the void of space.

    I would not go there; too fearful am I,

    but there are others who face the sky

    and boldly live their lives;

    the astronaut for science strives.

    To those who seek to raise the roof

    of being, and proof

    of wonders overlay,

    say I: to outer space, and away!

    Bravery instilled in many forms,

    breaking all our thought-of norms:

    the astronaut’s a walker of space,

    he or she goes to that place

    where others will not go,

    far beyond the reach of a stone’s throw

    the astronaut in space patrols

    how a ship ventures, through space rolls

    and touches down again.

    Sure the astronaut’s also glad when.

    To walkers of space I’m not quite akin,

    My courage, I’m afraid, is quite too far thin.

    So, to those brave enough to try,

    I say: beyond with you! To the sky!

    Woman

    Call me niña,

    señorita,

    Fräulein,

    dame,

    la belle dame sans merci,

    call me shedder of all tears,

    call me person of great fears

    or staunchly on my own,

    call me lovely to make others groan,

    call me sister, good architect,

    surrogate, subject, queen:

    and whether cwene or guena,

    I’ll take pride in what you mean.

    Call me muse of Dante – woman wise and serene –

    or else in Ilium the cause of scene.

    Call me triumphant goddess

    with stars of twelve enstoned

    upon my crown while I am safe enthroned.

    To me life’s not been easy.

    I’m of no temperament

    to follow rules not agreed to

    which you did invent.

    So, wherever you find me,

    do not give me pain,

    but love me as men did Helen,

    and your affections please maintain.