Symbolic Scribbles Series Sunday Edition [20 April 2025]
An ongoing poetic conversation chain with SylviA 🌞 KalinA and Jeremy Nathan Marks
Sunday Editions are ongoing poetic conversations between
S y l v i A 🌞 K a l i n A and Jeremy Marks
We hope you enjoy this series and invite you to participate in the weekly series publication chain.
Last Sunday’s Edition can be found HERE
We start back today with
photo by Jeremy Nathan Marks
Alewife —
A bridge was built to move freight across the swift moving current. Steel was cooked to make it look like the sun requires a mirror. The sky does not visibly age (father takes his ease). The river, between footings and spans, also seems as young as in the time of the alewife, when what land there was, was as dumb as Job. A bridge was built to make freight the current moving swift. And in a square on the other side of a rotary with full view of the blinking tower, geese and egrets drop feathers without a further thought. Spines dampen first, then the barbules. The river tells the sky it can ignore (not that it should) this steel toy, built of a child who never knew the alewife. A river built itself but in the shadow of what. Night alone (the sky again). Actually, it’s as Bishop said: ‘the water seemed suspended above the rounded gray and blue-gray stones.’* Yet, rocks have no feet, so how does the land carve water into ribbons, rivulets like Merrimack and Mystic. Or, mother, are we not each of us part of some giant fish where stones and water run between scales, seeking either mouth or tail. ©2025 Jeremy Nathan Marks *The line quoted is from ‘At the Fishhouses’ by Elizabeth Bishop
[The Reply]
Image: Mead Wildlife Area sign and Wisconsin Conservation Department administrators; Reese, Staber W August 1959
Mead Refuge —
Laurentide ice sheet glaciation Meltwater carved basin formations —All points of Mead origination Sediment blanket, outwash plains Wetland, drumlin, kettle, moraine Unintentional rhymes of land’s creation Establishing deposition Dual nature land depression The land always was and will forever remain Long after humans impose their reign, such Meager forces inflicting change Europeans forced desecration Natives resisted as a unified nation The land cried, her body maimed How dare we humans suppose suppositional Land drained for agricultural profit —Earth stood steadfast Stubborn soil banishing dreams —Earth stood steadfast Refuge born, conservational hand The Mead, a gift, a returning of home Varied wetland restoration Hardwood and aspen forestation Migratory diversification Abundant wildlife populations Human arrogance wounds eternally Intricate imbalances disrupted unlearnedly Lessons in nature’s own stratification Requires of humans much deeper transformations If being is belonging what separates our spirit from the soul? Perhaps the answers breathe within the wild's reclamations. —sylvia
©2025 SylviA 🌞 KalinA
Remember the joy of receiving a handwritten note or letter? 'Symbolic Scribbles Series' rekindles that magic, creating a space for poetic symbolic 'scribbles' where meaning hides in metaphors and symbols, waiting to be discovered. Each poem builds upon the last, like a literary game of telephone, where interpretations can twist and turn in unexpected ways.
Guidelines: Poems should be at least 60 words and use rich symbolism and metaphor
To join the letter chain, send your symbolic scribble to the most recent featured poem by emailing sylviakalina8@gmail.com or messaging
S y l v i A 🌞 K a l i n A
New series will be released 3-4 times a week, so subscribe to stay connected! We look forward to building a publication that transcends distance and bridges it with fun and inspiring poetic scribbles.
The beauty of this publication has really been unfolding, changing and shaping as we see where the symbolic translations of one takes the mind of another.
Sincere thanks for reading!
 | A guest post by
|
Beautiful work guys 💜✨