Arrival

Arrival

It can take a long time to get to
where you need to go. A life-time
of darting off in the wrong direction,
spurred by unreasonable reasons,
knee-jerk reactions to things that frighten
or attract us.

But at every stop,
we've fed on the drop of nectar
awaiting us there.

This time, I've taken control of my journey,
arriving at the place where I need to be
at this moment in my lifetime.

The butterfly of my soul was in danger
of dying from the winter cold in that place
where I'd agreed to go, away from so much
that feeds me.

In ancient Greek, "butterfly" and "spirit"
are the same word. How is it that I only learned this
just now, at this late stage
of my journey?

The day after my arrival from the cold and snow
to this place where roses are still blooming
and hummingbirds hover near the flowering
trees,

I saw and was seen by a Monarch butterfly--
as if my spirit had burst forth from me
long enough for me to see myself with clarity
and know that, this time, I'd taken the right road.

Copyright ©️ 2025 by Barbara Quick

Photo by Marian Brandt on Unsplash

I’m in Berkeley, my home for so many years, for a month-long house-sit made possible by my deep roots here and the generosity of fate and my wonderful friends.

My son has also come home to Berkeley, after living and working for nearly four years in Denmark. He took me out to lunch yesterday and helped me schlep my luggage to this sun-filled condominium owned by the daughter and son-in-law of one of the poets and publishers in my orbit of writer friends. Every winter, they go away for a month to his home country.

The reason for my being able to stay here is a cat named Albert, who needs looking after while his family is on holiday.

Now that I’m getting to know him, I’m wondering whether Albert the cat might be the reincarnation of my mother’s cousin Albert Shapiro, PhD., who was a therapist and an art collector and the reason why I made my first migration to Berkeley from Los Angeles, following my Muse.

Albert and his then-wife Dorothy were my introduction to so many of the things that became important to me—and both of them welcomed and appreciated me in a way that I never felt welcomed or appreciated by my immediate family.

I used to sit in the Berkeley Rose Garden, in my early twenties, and write poetry. Dorothy inspired me to learn to be a gourmet cook. (I was already a baker.) I got work at UC Berkeley and learned to edit, all the while honing my craft as a writer.

I worked as a caterer for small private dinner parties, mostly for an amiable professor of Greek literature, who introduced me to his guests by saying, in his heavily accented English, “Barbara is not just a cook. She is a poet!”

A drop of nectar here, a drop of nectar there. It was always just barely enough to sustain me.

With an inheritance from my mother, and an unreasonable sense of optimism after the sale of Vivaldi’s Virgins to HarperCollins, I acquired a lovely little Berkeley bungalow with a huge orange tree, roses, and a garden.

And then I failed to hang on to the house, after the downturn of 2008, when publishers were yanking their support away from mid-list literary writers such as myself.

I wrote and sold quite a few more books, but somehow fell off the trajectory I thought I’d been on, and fell into the hands of a predatory mortgage broker—and the rest is history.

My son’s life would be easier now if his mom had been financially wiser. But because of who he is, he’s doing wonderfully well nonetheless, and making the world a better place in the process. I see his spirit clearly, and it is a thing of rare beauty.

My path has been sprinkled with sparkling jewels.

Albert has been helping me write this morning! You are helping me by reading my words. ❤️

The words that you sprinkle on my path are more precious to me than priceless jewels.

Photo by Deng Xiang on Unsplash

My author website. Please come visit and browse. Lots of the origin stories and links to my interviews can be found here.