Village Poets of Sunland/Tujunga is happy to welcome poets Hilda Weiss & Maja Trochimczyk on the 3rd Sunday of July, the 20th, Sunday, 4:30 pm at Bolton Hall Museum. There will also be an open mic and poets are invited to participate in the open reading segment of the event. The Bolton Hall Museum is located at 10110 Commerce Ave, Tujunga, CA 91040. Bolton Hall is a Los Angeles Historical Landmark built in 1913. Our reading starts at 4:30 pm and goes till 6:30 pm. Refreshments will be served. Free parking is available on the street and also at Elks Lodge 10137 Commerce Ave. Park behind the building and walk a short distance to Bolton Hall Museum across the street and down the block.
Hilda Weiss is the co-founder and curator for www.Poetry.LA, a website that features videos of poets and poetry venues in Southern California. Her poetry has been published in journals such as Rattle, Poet Lore, Salamander, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Spillway, and Humana Obscura as well as in anthologies such as Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles, Women in a Golden State, and Poetry Goes to the Movies among others. She has a chapbook, Optimism About Trees.In 2023 her manuscript, Seemingly Normal, was a finalist in the National Federation of State Poetry Societies competition. She lives in Santa Monica where she grows her own vegetables in a garden full of native California plants.
When Sun Breaks Through the Marine Layer
It sneaks through a crack in the hedge.
When it falls on my face, I look up
a bare branch, makes it a bridge
to where I planted chia sage
More will come later, perhaps
the mint-scented leaves of mountain beebalm,
only one, and the sun has found it.
Published in Humana Obscura Journal, Spring 2025, Issue 12
I Go Out at Night to Breathe the Stars & Pray for Rain
After the song, California Stars, by Woody Guthrie
It’s twilight and the great orange-peel sky
darkens to blueberry, blackberry, sweet
juice of night, Venus brightening
over distant water. I long
to lay my shoulder on the ragged bark
of an old live oak, breathe
the stars on the sage-salt wind.
Days of full sun, dry fields, thistle,
vinegar weed, they all came early.
Oak trees fell, cut off from water
by drought, dead from the root.
Sun gaped through the canopy.
I studied the plan
to regrow the grove,
tied my shoelaces, lugged water,
found the protected seedlings,
chose one to be mine; it’s number 599.
On the uphill road before the ruts turn
to crest the hill, I want to hold out my hand
to the wind, animal of little wetness.
I want to kneel in that silky cool dust.
Published in Women in a Golden State, Gunpowder Press, 2025
Before the Long Weekend
Here comes the spot on the road where wheels grind.
But no fear. It’s
not the engine failing
on a curve halfway to Malibu.
It’s the road,
sanded and scraped of hardened oil,
craving a new surface.
Like summer when you
towel down and skin
peels in little rolls that make you
hum and shiver. Like jazz on the radio.
A girl in pink flip flops and lemonade dress.
Crows carrying long grass.
What’s That? A New Something.
Oh Baby,
How Are You? Lavender sky, new
crescent moon. Sand me.
Dive into my bones.
Note: The three titles: What’s That? A New Something. and Oh Baby, How Are You? are jazz instrumental pieces by Wolfgang Schalk.
Published in Coiled Serpent Anthology (Tia Chucha Press, 2016)
© 2025 Hilda Weiss
Maja Trochimczyk, PhD, is a Polish American poet, music historian, photographer, and author of eight books on music and Polish culture, most recently Celebrating Modjeska in California (2023), Fr餩ric Chopin: A Research and Information Guide (co-edited with William Smialek, 2015) and Gki in Context: Essays on Music (2017). Her eleven poetry volumes include five anthologies, Chopin with Cherries (2010), Meditations on Divine Names (2011), Grateful Conversations (co-edited with Kathi Stafford, 2018), We Are Here: Village Poets Anthology (co-edited with Marlene Hitt, 2020) , and Crystal Fire. Poems of Joy and Wisdom (2022). Her six poetry books include Rose Always - A Love Story (2008, rev. 2020), Miriams Iris (2008), Into Light (2016), Bright Skies (2022), and two prizewinning books based on Polish experiences of WW2 and its aftermath: Slicing the Bread (2014) and The Rainy Bread (2016, 2nd expanded edition, 2021). A former Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga, she is the founder of Moonrise Press that issued over 20 volumes of poetry. Since 2019, Trochimczyk has served as the President of the California State Poetry Society, managing editor of the California Quarterly and editor of the CSPS Poetry Letter.
Dragon Fruit Awareness
—for Ian, after Amtrak ride from Arizona
Enlightenment is like the taste of dragon fruit—
refreshing, neither sweet nor sour.
It feels just right when you know if all—
the whys, the therefores. The “Is God evil
since there’s evil all around us?” And
“Where’s God?”—”Omnipresent”—
Spinoza said— “There’s nothing
that is not God.” Or, to put it bluntly,
“everything is divine.”
You say dragon fruit tastes boring,
it tastes like nothing. So does awareness,
neither sad nor happy. You know it all
and you know nothing—
except that the lifeforce of trees
is a million zillion times stronger
than the most powerful weapons
that humans make—except that
the nuclear power of children’s
laughter can break the hardened
rock of an indifferent heart—
except... I cannot fully explain it.
It cannot be put into words.
You just have to taste it yourself.
Here’s a slice of the dragon fruit,
an afterimage of stars in midnight sky.
Its taste? Just right—
neither sweet, nor sour.
Published in California Quarterly 50:2, Summer 2024
Alchemy in the Hills
Rarefied air opens up to reveal
rocks in the mountain stream,
scattered sparks of reflected sunrays,
shimmering golden waves of water
spreading in circles from where
I stand on thick grains of sand. I watch
a wild sunflower unfurl its petals.
I smile at the aerial acrobatics of sparrows,
orioles and the small yellow-gray
birds of unknown names. The scents
of white sage and sumac fill the valley,
ringing with the buzz of a myriad of bees
hovering about cotton-ball arrays
of wild buckwheat. It is not much,
but it is enough: rock, sand, and leaf enough.
Children’s laughter flows towards me
from another wading pool, upstream.
They splash and laugh, laugh and splash,
amused by every droplet. I rest in
the center of my universe, at a still point
my turning world, where all elements—
air, rock, sand, water, sunfire—
merge into one blessing of being here,
sharing this space, this time with
children’s laughter, with lily-white
yucca blossoms stretching to the sky,
and a single blade of grass guarding
its spot between stones on the creek shore.
Published in the "Crystal Fire" anthology (2022)
From Minimum Chronicles
~ for my children
A tall glass of water and three oranges,
three blood oranges from a tree I planted
ten years ago in my Sunland garden.
A tall glass of water... Am I a lump of clay
that's returning to Earth? Ashes to ashes?
The journey's done, nothing remains?
Am I a star of unsung brilliance hidden in a fragile body –
learning, collecting wisdom of limitation, before
my triumphant return to the glory of timeless Now?
Am I saved? Redeemed? Do I need a Savior?
Am I my own savior, perhaps? What is true?
What is real? Ashes to ashes or light into Light?
A tall glass of water and three blood oranges
for breakfast. I'm grateful for the knowledge
they impart. What I am. What I'm made of.
The abundance of rain and sweetness of sunlight
fills the fruit with fragrant, rosy juice, under
the soft, pliable rind – so lovely inside and outside.
A fruit of the earth, air, water, fire nourishes me
with elements. The fruit I made that now makes me
full of morning happiness in the winter rain.
Soothing patter of raindrops on the patio roof
assures me that questions do not matter,
answers do not matter either.
It is the NOW of breathing, of tasting that
slightly tart, refreshing orange I grew, a jewel
I add to the beads of memories I keep.
Published in California Quarterly 48:1, Spring 2022
© 2025 Maja Trochimczyk
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