Paul Clement Czaja

Paul Clement Czaja Poems

Paul Clement Czaja Biography

My Baptismal name is Paul after the saint who wrote such good and helpful letters - my middle name is Clement after my paternal grandfather who played the violin - my family name is Czaja (pronounced “chai-a” which rhymes with “Hi-ya! ”) which is the Polish word for the Lapwing plover (Vanellus vanellus) . I am from the North-East Bronx originally, and as a boy with my twin brother, Pete, was taught elementary lessons at our Parochial School (St. Raymond's) by teachers who used “carrots and sticks” to modify our happy, playful behavior - and then later as a teenager was instructed by the priests and brothers of a Catholic High School (Cardinal Hayes High) - and then still later as a young man by the Maryknollers at Maryknoll and after by the good Jesuits at Fordham University. I majored in philosophy and the classics (Latin & Greek) : and then because of my philosophical studies in personhood and existentialism, I decided to put my life to work ministering to children and was hired by Nancy Rambusch as one of the founding faculty of the Whitby School the American Montessori Center Montessori in Greenwich, Connecticut. After two score years of happiness there, I went west to have Montessori educational adventures elsewhere on this beautiful blue planet in such diverse places as Oklahoma, Colorado, Wyoming, Michigan, China, Minnesota, Arizona, and most recently Belize - and now Florida. The past forty eight years of serving children and their parents have whitened my hair and beard with age and weakened my legs - but they have not taken the sparkle from my eyes nor the smile from my face, nor the joy from my mind/heart/soul. I am a poet, storyteller, lecturer, Montessori educator and trainer, consultant, administrator, philologist, friend, husband, father, and an advocate of the sharing of mind, heart, and soul within the unfathomable space named the Internet by most but called the Noosphere by me. I can be reached by e-mail at czaja36@yahoo.com.)

The Best Poem Of Paul Clement Czaja

Sailing

I love the ocean –
the living ocean always in motion –
always changing-
primeval yet ever new—
at times so gentle –
other times fierce and dangerous –
so powerful –
so immense –
so sacred in its ancientness –
mother of earthly life –
its distant beckoning horizon –
its ceaseless waves and tides –
its familiar salty taste –
its many colors and moods.
I love sailing in my wooden boat
on top of it –
through it –
held up by it –
surrounded –
embraced by the entire vast ocean –
sailing with the wind –
unafraid –
at home on the sea –
and when at anchor
diving from the deck
deep into the cold sea –
underwater
with my eyes open
seeing mystery everywhere –
deepening darkness –
then thrusting my body upwards
like a fish –
up,
up breaking the surface
with my head and pointed hands,
wet arms and shoulders up into the air
and sunlight -
gasping for the sweet air –
dashing the water with a shake
from my gray beard –
swimming for my island of a boat –
climbing abroad once more
to become a man –
a seaman –
pulling up the hook from the bottom –
setting my boat free –
filling the sail once more with the wind –
leaping ahead,
my strong hand on the tiller –
the ocean water
rushing along the hull
making it hum like a violin –
my whole mind/heart/soul
sings out in joy –
sailing!

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