FOR 4-15-26 CS AT THE EDGE OF 78

 

Want a special birthday present

Maybe my brass planisphere

For the Northern hemisphere

Could show magical constellations

(Painted in Enamel)

Touch one and I’m suddenly there

Square Corvid filled with cawing crows

Colorful glass and deep black feathers

Laid at my feet in neat rows

Touch Corona and I’m queen for the day

The crown tossed into the heavens

By a love-sick Greek god

Landing on my braid so tangled

Everything so star-spangled

Touch the heel of Orion

And his trusty dog wags his tail

Sloppy birthday kisses as I laugh with glee

Someone actually fussing over me

10 days before the day

So hard to wait

When I’m at the edge of 78…

 

©2026 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)

Image: paraphrasing song title by Stevie Nicks

CS at the Edge of 78/Enamel Planisphere

 

 

 

#0 THE FOOL (Song in Progress)

 

Saw a man walking, white dog by his heels

Guitar slung over his strong, straight back

He plucked flowers from a bush, color and shape surreal

Eyes focused on me, while shifting his rucksack

 

Play guitar because it’s all resonance

Sometimes you can hear the dissonance

But most times the beauty shows its arrogance

Hey, hey, hey, play and sing night and day…

 

Walked toward an overhanging cliff

He jumped off and I had to scream

But heard a sacred sound of a familiar riff

Saw him hanging by his fingers on a sunbeam

 

Play guitar because it’s all vibration

Eases all life’s vexation

Sometimes a body needs sedation

Hey, hey, hey, play and sing night and day…

 

Swung himself back on the overhang

Still holding the uncrushed flower

Sat down, played guitar and sang

Darkening sky lit by a meteor shower

 

Chladni patterns disburse on fingerboards

Frequencies echo as I strum the chords

While nodal lines of the vibration awards

Hey, hey, hey, play and sing night and day…

 

I am Zero, therefore first or last

Some call me The Fool but I know the truth

I have no future and not much of a past

Because I don’t worry, blessed with perpetual youth

 

Share a secret language with your guitar

Playing whatever you like under the evening star

Life is music and your mind will wander far

Hey, hey, hey, play and sing night and day…

 

(c) 2019 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)

From my book CHORDING THE CARDS AND OTHER POEMS

Image: #0 The Fool, After Tarot deck

 

 

INTENSE DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD (SONG-IN-PROGRESS)

 

My road once was a riverbed
So hard to get it through my head
Although shells poke out of the watershed
It morphed into a now-ancient farmstead
//
But so hard to proliferate in sandy soil
Sweaty involvement of those who toil
Flora silently struggling in turmoil
Earth defeating by strangling coil
//
So now the road is rutted and rough
Neighbors look neither left nor right, oddly enough
Our lives here are admittedly tough
But wouldn’t dare call anyone’s bluff
//
What is the mystery and melancholy of a street
De Chirico painted the dreamlike retreat
I move through it with an irregular heartbeat
Within a life with memories mainly bittersweet
//
Where is the love promised once upon a time
No sense wondering since I’ve passed my prime
The clock slowed down, gave up its chime
And my mind is merely an internal rhyme
//
Sometimes I can sense your passion
There is definitely a mutual attraction
But will always deny my reaction
Because love is merely an abstraction
//
We’re all refractions of light
Looking different to each, is it right?
To some we look like day, to some like night
But rarely is it really visual sight
//
So I wind down the road symbolizing life
Rutted, rocky and sometimes filled with strife
Circular as stone or straight as a sharpened knife
Interwoven with noise or sweet sounds of a fife…
//
© 2020 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Giorgio de Chirico, Mystery and Melancholy of a Street

 MODERN BEOWULF (WORK-IN-PROGRESS)

 

Beowulf came to me in a dream

Bragging about his limousine 

Grendel and mom floating in the lake

Double dragons kill each other, Beowulf’s mistake

I'm back with Beowulf's dragons of mythology

But what led to this embryology?

Grendel and his mom lived through the dis-arming

Dynasty of Cain’s learned to be charming

 

Wake up and decorate with a dip pen and ink

Drawing tarot symbols, my art stinks

But the song I wrote plays on tenor guitar

As I leave Philly to travel not-so-far

 

Between 2 rivers Schuylkill and Delaware

Arrive in East Village’s Tompkins Square

Dave van Ronk shakes my hand and welcomes me

Then begins singing the St James Infirmary

 

Wander into the Cafe Wha

Electric guitars? How bourgeois!

Oh, man, the guitarist is not only hunky

He plays incredible music that is so funky

My great folk career too late to write words acoustically

Name’s Jimi Hendrix, inheriting the seat of Geat musically

 

And then I see Beowulf from my dreams

Talking to three other Penny Poker kings

Hrothgar, Hygelac, and an unknown king of Danes

With the one-armed jack Grendel passing out cocaine

Three tarot queens flirt with the men

Hildeburh, Modthryth, Hygd and then

The Hag! Grendel’s  mother shaggy yet youthful

I wonder if this version is kind or still brutal

 

Walking through the night to my rented room

Anonymous writer seventh century presumed

Did you speak the poem or did you sing?

Did you play the oud or lute or anonymous strings?

Or pound drums while telling of the Scyldings’ Spear Dane

Got lost thinking of Beowulf in the rain

 

Or anonymous was a woman (says Virginia Woolf)

A mother telling her toddlers stories of Beowulf?

Such a good tale picked up and passed around by bards

Maybe she was one of the queens of my tarot cards

     

Will never know….

 

© 2026 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)

IMAGE: Beowulf 7TH CENTURY SUTTON HOO HELMET

 

 

 

THANK YOU MAGGIE KUHN

“Stand before the people you fear and speak your mind – even if your voice shakes” –Maggie Kuhn, Founder of The Gray Panthers

 

At age 34
I sat in the Women’s Congress audience
Enthralled by this old lady
And everything she said
Seemed meant for me
An older student
At the university
I couldn’t even speak from my desk
Without shaking
So although her words performed no magic
At the time
I conjured them up
When I really needed them
Stars and sparkles wreathing my face
Sneezing a bit from the moon dust
And for the next few years
Speaking in auditoriums for my career
No trembling, shaking, or fear
Just Maggie Kuhn’s words
Transforming me two decades later
Now I am old enough
To be a Gray Panther
(Although I was completely gray
By age thirty-seven)
And when once I wanted to be
Abby Hoffman, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez
I now want to age gracefully
Be grateful for aging
Be like Maggie Kuhn
It is not her birthday
Or death day
I just want to say
Thank you, Ms. Kuhn
I hope I can live up to your words
Now that I am on the path you blazed…

 

“Old age is not a disease – it is strength and survivorship, triumph over all kinds of vicissitudes and disappointments, trials and illnesses.” Maggie Kuhn, Founder of the Gray Panthers

 

(c) 2018, 2026  Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)

IMAGE: Maggie Kuhn

 In Celebration of A Room of One's Own Day

THE NINE SPELLS OF GROA

Based on the Poetic Edda and Prose Edda

(a work in progress)

 

INTRODUCTION

The necromancer Svipdag*

Raised his mother Groa** from the dead

“Mother dearest, forgive me for disturbing you

But is there any way you can teach me your craft

To keep me safe?

I fear my cruel stepmother has set me up

And I will never complete this quest

To meet and marry my fated bride Mengloth" ***

 

Ah, we mothers who love our children, our sons

Groa reaches back through the years

Worried that the gods will be angry

Remembering her aid to Thor

Who once carried her husband

Orvandel the Bold in a basket

Breaking off his frozen toe

Then flinging it into the sky

Becoming the Star called “Orvandel’s Toe” ****

In gratitude, Groa loosened a flintstone

Lodged in Thor’s head from the war

So because he was grateful, she knew

The God of Thunder would never punish her

For saving her son

Nor punish him for his Necromancy…

 

Here then is the GROGALDR

Related in the Poetic Edda

Modernized rhymes by me

For us modern English speakers

 

#1 If restrained, shake from your shoulders

Do not be afraid, be bolder

Think of your father Orvandel

 

#2 If traveling far, bolts of the Fate Urth

Shall guard you (whom I once gave birth)

No matter what side of the road you take

 

#3 If threatening rivers of kelp

Invoke the gods to help

Let the waters fail from your strength

 

#4 If you chant against those using the gallows

Into thine hands shall the hearts of the foes

Grant peace from the warriors to you

 

#5 If your legs are completely bound

Impossible for you to move around

Break the chains with thought

 

#6 If storms rage on the sea

From wind or wave you are free

The boat will always remain calm

  

#7 If mountain frost seeks to kill

This chant will not allow fatal cold to chill

Your flesh remains warm and safe

 

#8 If wandering at night on murky way

No curses of the dead will hold sway

No harm comes from the spirits

 

#9 If meeting a warlike giant

Make your words defiant

I give you wit and wisdom to win

 

Footnotes

*Svipdag translated as “Swift Day” and son of Groa and Orvandel The Bold

**Groa (volva or Viking seeress/shaman)  and mother of Svipdag

***From the Prose Edda, Star may be what we now call Rigel in Orion or Alcor in Ursa Major

****Mengloth translated as “Necklace Glad” and she may be Frigg or Freyja (associated with a magical necklace) as suggested in the Prose Edda

 

 

 

 

WINTER SOLSTICE EVE 12-20-25

Starry, silent night

Sun-streaked sky mists to daylight

Earth, holy and bright

Winter timelessness takes flight

Peace and love a wondrous sight…

 

© 2025 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)

IMAGE TREEHENGE SUNSET & TREES 12-20-25