Alicia Viguer-Espert

Born and raised in Valencia, Spain, Alicia Viguer-Espert travelled the world, learned English as an adult and on her first writing attempt, (2017) was the winner of the San Gabriel Valley Poetry Festival Book with her chapbook To Hold a Hummingbird. In 2021, Four Feather Press published her chapbook Out of the Blue Womb of the Sea. She writes about relationships to nature, identity, language, home, and soul. Her work has been published in national and international journals, anthologies, and magazines. She was selected as one of the “Top 39 L.A. Poets of 2017,” one of “Ten Poets to Watch on 2018,” in the “Special Edition” by Spectrum Publications, and “Editor’s Choice” by Panoply in 2022. Alicia is a 2019 and 2020 Pushcart nominee.

Remembering the Monastery

Between the damaged roof and the walnut tree

slightly to the right, I watched Venus appear

using a celestial method long discovered

by astronomers who registered astral details

as we, scribes, illuminated manuscripts

in the dim light of the scriptorium.

Those days were sacred, when a robin

sitting on the window sill to preen its tail

caught the brothers’ attention and they

lifted their heads from smooth parchment,

interrupted grinding lapis for a minute

to smile at birds’ ease to reach heaven.

Today the empty monastery stands silent,

stone walls crumbled, beehives destroyed,

all bees dying in clusters from pesticides,

its orchard burned years ago, the pigsty

covered with ivy, only a single walnut tree

stands by the wooden door cracked by sun,

which, like me, was once new and strong.

In those clear mornings nothing was futile,

the bundles we carried were not burdens

but a fair exchange for the gifts received,

silence, blue skies, tolling bells falling

like rain in May when it was most needed.

The roads leading to that door were infinite

and no wind blowing over the hills stopped

a pilgrim seeking the solace of an inner 

contact with Andromeda, Cassiopeia, or

their own soul, from getting their reward.

In another life, eons ago, I must have been

one of those monks waiting for the Beloved,

leaning on the walnut tree, closed eyes focused

on the heart chakra counting each breath,

which like heartbeats, connected to my soul.

I remember an eagle resting on that same tree

tried to tell me a secret, but I didn’t listen.

Read Alicia’s work and more in Solum Journal Summer 2022.