Celeste Snowber: the marrow of longing

Click to watch a video presentation of this poem, performed by the author.


longing resides in the marrow

an ache for a land I do not know

terrain inside the cavities

of my chest, asking to be

made familiar with the territory

of a place where one knows

b e l o n g I n g

she spoke of a land she never knew

over and over again I heard the

tales of leaving when one or two years old in genocide

as if time had passed and she was ten or twenty

longing for a land was bred in my mother

perhaps her parents ached for the Armenia

they left, and even the beauty of Cambridge, Massachusetts

could not equal what was in their cells

the body has a way of knowing roots

place of viscera – soles of feet are souls

knowing where earth has raised them

I am a child raised between land and sea

borders between is where I find home

an ache is still reaching inside to find

the earth in my body

my body in the earth

Longing is the passage

it is not to be fixed

but to recognize what is always

present on the inside.

Celeste Nazali Snowber

Celeste Snowber: Bodypsalm for living into paradox

Welcome back to the familiar

the land of the perplexed

where paradox reigns

and heart, mind, and body

are not in sync,

harmony, congruence or flow

and no matter how diligent

 you are to reflect,

problem solve, brainstorm or bodystorm

it sits as a big mountain

in front of you

and cannot be climbed with bare feet

you are in the terrain of paradox

the geography of the unknown

where the brittleness of breath

lives amongst the stars

your task is to breathe

deep into the place you are perplexed.

Take shoes for the journey

these aren’t any shoes

but these are your dancing shoes

the ones that look like sneakers

but have a support for your arch

Life holds continual

places of dissonance

it doesn’t matter the source:

disappointment or sorrows

with relationships, health or finances

Know this:  P A R A D O X

will always be there

singing at the door

waiting for you to

Put your dancing shoes on

give yourself the support you need

a bigger arch for life

and treat paradox as your partner

hold it tenderly

romance her and put your

arms around the dilemmas

soften your relationship

towards not knowing.

Breathe into uncertainty

knowing this is the

essence of life

and when it comes

know you are invited

once again into

the spirituality of practice:

loving-kindness towards

all that is not resolved

in your heart.

Celeste Snowber: Kohala wind

Photo by Gary Bandzmer




Kohala wind

she moves fiercely

one feels her in the bone

the skin knows her arrival

the ears hear her symphony

greens of every variety are swaying

in her announcement

Kohala wind on the Northwest Coast

of the Big Island of Hawaii

a constant companion

who reminds me of where

humans derive: of earth and humus

whatever details are swirling

in my small mind and lilting body

they are small compared to her power

it is her character to disrupt, turn over

create dances with the landscape

I am comforted and disturbed in her wake

not knowing how I will live without her

it as if she has become a lover

leaving me once again with longing

Celeste Snowber

March 22, 2011

Kapa’au, Hawaii

Celeste Snowber: Earth Traces

Photo of Celeste Snowber by Gary Bandzmer




She’s compelled with traces
of identity where the tales
were born: a land of both
beauty and genocide.

Not for facts,
the orality of story
the lived history
she heard as a
child of diaspora.

She aches for
the smell of earth
textures of mountains
colors of skin
the old country,
birthland of her mother.

Geography holds
its own story -
a narrative of knowing
hidden in the scent
of mud and sky
bread and plants
fruit, half-ripened
on Armenian soil.

An ache for land
from whence one came,
a longing deeper than
under/over standing
visceral call
to touch and feel
hear the earth’s
song and lament.

Celeste Snowber: An intuitive scent – the stew of our lives

They cooked with their bodies

an intuitive scent in the fingers

a little of this, a dash of that

they knew just the right amount

a cookbook was not meant for

the mothers of the old country

many worlds are contained

within this old country

oceans of cultures and languages

the dialect they all understood

was the art of cooking for their families

written in the recipe of the heart

passed down from generation to generation.

My mother left this earth too early

till I cared to archive the past

I have been longing for all the flavors

of my childhood in my adult life.

The parts I remember and the

recipes I follow still do not

produce the exact combination of food

every Christmas I make the cheese boureg

and I come closer to the cheese that melts

in my mouth, but I know there is a language

of Armenian cooking I have yet to live into.

Until I eat at my friend’s Armenian family

and the mothers and grandmothers create

the flavors, tastes and textures of my youth –

pine nuts and lamb, beans and tomato

caressed in olive oil, dolma stuffed with

filling that was my childhood revisited.

I have not stopped thinking of those

explosions of beauty bursting inside

my palette since I left their home and I

am now dreaming of every food that was

stuffed in my household growing up –

meatballs, peppers, tomatoes, and grapeleaves

and I know I am lacking because my own children

have not eaten anything stuffed except a bird

Recipes for the life are hidden in the body

the knowing of the cells, whether

they are meals to eat or wisdom to live by

they are stored in the memory and marrow

of mouths and tongues, noses and fingers

and in these remembrance there is

a storehouse of love waiting to be taken

bite by bite into the stew of our lives.

Celeste Snowber: In praise of the kitchen-studio

she created beauty
in strife, aftermath
of genocide, she
escaped but the
heart does not cease
to know the lament
of the forefathers
and foremothers
of the old country

at eleven she made
paper roses, and
sold them in Cambridge, Mass
brought the reapings
to her family

at seventy-three, the year
before her death, she still
was bringing flowers to life
after my father died -
nothing could stop her
arranging living petals
into modern art

our kitchen was
transformed into an
art studio, either
cooking with color
or creating color
through sculptural
objects and plant life

I have kept the tradition
of my artist-mother
knocked out a wall
in my kitchen/dining area
and put a wooden floor in
it doubles as a dance
studio, torso ecstatic

kitchens are places
of love: creating food, art,
dance, exchange of hearts
through flesh
and always, always
there shall be flowers

there is strife too in kitchens -
tears and conflict
but connections usually
win out, the ripeness
of beauty over a life-time

we are made and
re-made in the
kitchen-studio
colors of soul
brought to brilliance
in ordinary living.

Celeste Snowber: Beneath the skin of plum black

Plum black
the color
of love marinated
in drips of oil
tenderized in
the h/earth
in New England kitchen.

Star leaves
at slender head
pear like in shape
smooth for fingers touch
endless dishes
meals of everyday
formed from you
a sacred vegetable
in its nakedness.

Eggplant.
Jeweled in sautéed onions
adorned with red
pepper, a hint
of green parsley
a slice of lamb.

It was your colors
my mother was
in love with,
aromas took second place
to the magnificent
hues of dark purple
blackened violet.

I’ve had to disguise
you, eggplant
for my children’s palette
Mushed with olive oil,
yogurt and plenty of garlic
you transform into
babaganoosh, still
a far cry from
the 101 ways my
Armenian mother
would lovingly open
you up to your
pungent parts.

“Never leave the pan without
a hint of green,” she would say,
“Look how stunning the red
pepper accents the plum
of eggplant”

What was in the pan
was living art,
smells, textures, hues
were the heaven of the
new earth, and the
scent of the old land.

I’m the second generation
infused with creativity
close to the bone.
Color was the heart
of my home,
hidden in the eggplant
and hidden in a life.

My mother had an
eggplant soul
a beauty of both
dark and light
yellow white flesh
of eggplant encased
with purple hues
the meeting of art and life
just beneath the
skin of plum black.


Celeste Nazalee Snowber

This poem has appeared in Ararat Quarterly, Fall, 2005. Vol. XLIV No. 184, p. 56. We use it by kind permission of its author.

Celeste N. Snowber: Your Stones Wait

at Geghard Monastery

Your stones wait
for the faithful
to come and be
once again woed
into your womb.

starkness of ancient
stone bearing the walls
provides an empty space
for one to enter
and greet the holy.
Emptiness is the vessel
a room stripped of
all except one
opening for light
to break through.

I dance slowly-gently
in your crevices as
if a force moves my
limbs in damp air.
Knowing all along it
is the same Spirit which
has guided me all
these years, yet
a few moments birth
eternity on this ground.


Copyright Celeste N. Snowber. Used here by kind permission of the author.