Poet and Tanka: Melissa Dixon

Born in Winnipeg on the wickedly cold Canadian prairies, August 28, 1923. At school, my heart at least was warmed by my favorite subjects--literature, composition and music. In high school I found a clud to my future: I won a leading role (Hermia) in a production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Later, I established myself at CBC Radio as a performer. It was radio's Golden Years, and I got a lot of work "doubling" (playing more than one part). I loved every minute! Today, most sound effects are computerized and added when actors have gone home. We pioneers had more fun--watching the sound man dispatch the villain by clobbering a cabbage head with a "blunt instrument"! Spanning forty years, I worked in all media, in Winnipeg, Vancouver, and Toronto. I also enjoyed writing newspaper articles.

I married another actor, Ed McNamara. Hmmm. An English-Scot and an Irish-American. Well, we did last sixteen years . . . .We had three sons--Shaun, Miles and Grady, and adopted a little girl--Rianna--an exotic mix of Scot and Bahamian. Shaun died by accident in 1995.

My life focus is spiritual, but not religious. Truth is in every path. In my mid-forties, I went to India on pilgrimage to an ashram outside Bombay. But it wasn't there I learned how to deepen my meditation. No, it was in a hotel room over the streets of Delhi--forced to shut out cries of vendors, honking taxis, bicycle bells, or the muffled voice of the assistant manager through my door, pleading with me to meet his boss. We learn our lessons in surprising ways! Now retired, I'm glad to spend my last years writing poetry, visiting family, and staying in contact with poets and other spiritual friends.

Poem:

One that that stays with me from childhood is the wonder of northern lights! The prairies for me were bleak, barren, cold. My eyes searched for beauty finding little. But come summer our family escaped for two whole months to our cottage in the north, where there were trees and lakes! And when we were lucky, into our night skies poured these haunting images:

     shimmering shapes
     above the dark hills
     northern lights
     imagining I feel
     magnetic fingers

Comments: I see my younger self, looking up at the lights as I stand at the base of a group of rolling hills. (Hills? Am I fantasizing this?  . . .I do remember trees . . .!) Well, where the poem is concerned, does it matter? It does to me as writer. Above me hangs a scene of unearthly beauty--masses of luminous solar particles in a slow dance--shifting, merging, changing color. In some cultures these awe-inspiring lights are regarded as spirits; I want to treat them with utmost respect, revealing all dramatic values. The hills' silent silhouettes given the best clean contrast to "shimmering shapes". (Now I think of it--my Dad did drive me once to those foothills!)

In the third (pivot) line, I'd love to have used "aurora" . . .such elegance! But "northern lights" connotes more presence for that almost sinister flow of power. sometimes one has to search for a pivot word or phrases to link two elements in a tanka, but this one popped right into place. And--oh look! "north" is a "dark" word and "light" is--well--light--the same contrast as in the first two lines:

   imagining I feel
   magnetic fingers

Again, I am standing by the hills, and--(yes! I was there!)--I shiver, and the back of my neck suddenly tingles. (Has a long phantom arm reached out to touch me?)

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