Other Interests

First, let me say I appreciate literary greatness. Some of my favorite authors and poets have become Nobel laureates: JM Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer, and Seamus Heaney are among them. After 20 years, JM Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians still haunts me. Nadine Gordimer's Burger's Daughter will help you understand the social and political climate I grew up in. Seamus Heaney's Field Work is, I find, accessible (in contrast to some his more recent poetry, which I have to work harder at) and richly rewarding.

So, I know what it is to be humbled by greatness, yet still venture to share in the endeavor of writing. When I am moved, poetry (well, ... that's what I call it) springs into my mind. I observe that I write prose that is like poetry and poetry that is like prose. I tip my hat to convention, but I will not be restrained by it. At any rate, I like my poetry because it tells the story of me. But, I'm biased; I like me. I don't expect everyone to have the same forbearance for this tiny window to my mind, my soul. So, a sliver is shown here, because even a sliver is more than I expect to be tolerable to anyone but me!

When a good friend's son died in 1994, this poem surfaced. I wrote another verse, but I only remember the first... In dying, Stith gave me life--opening me up to grief, opened me up to feeling, shook me out of the dullness I had hidden in.

Chalice

Your grief

spills

over

and fills me up

with tears

that wash

my face and soak away

all the layers I'd amassed

to keep such grief at bay.

The next two are about writing poetry. First, thoughts that propelled my pen during a visit to London:

London

A city that inspires
as much by figures bright of legend
as those that ghosted moth-like
against the flickering light of life.

Pulsed by yearning
my self-sense surges.
Battles mediocre pallor choices casting,
threading thoughts, jewels aspiring.

Bolt upright in the night
realization thrusting into consciousness:
embryonic pearls, my introspections
hold no interest save to me.
Liked but equal to the listening measure,
tempting then, to put aside my treasure.

This on a trip away from home:

A moment worth sharing

I wished I could paint powerful pictures
in words. Now I find I need not,
completely, for you collaborate in creating.
Imagine then this great morning,
beauty that almost stopped my heart
with pain for you were not there.

Early sun lighting emerald the foothills
while behind the mountains merged
into the dark rags of the nights storm.
Tossed about, in trails of mist,
white birds, swooping with my mind
in the wind that bears your image.

I wrote this as prose to a friend, but realized it was a poem that says volumes about how I came to be the singular person that is me:

Background

I was a girl in Africa,
barefoot free;
the vibrant rhythm of that life,
and its discordance,
shaped me.

The voice you hear

I’m so glad you caught words whispering
mysteries in me that light in you
desires to create and be created.

Yes, friend blessed, true and more true
now your voice takes flame
and burns its course, for me renewal.

Wind to Me

You are wind to me
you lift my spirit, free
Yes, and penetrating rain
your images fill me, alive again

Missing You sequence

Rain Images sequence

Of course, Seamus Heaney put it best (in "Personal Helicon"):

"Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,
To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing."