"Doesn’t every story begin ankle-deep in the sea?"--Eloise Klein Healy
http://www.eloisekleinhealy.com/
My first full Dorland Day I dedicate to my friend and mentor, Eloise Klein Healy, without whom I would not be where I am today--literally and figuratively. EKH is the visionary who created the M.F.A. Low-Residency Program at AULA. Not only has she mentored me through grad school, she stuck with me all these years, encouraged me to "teach" at AUSB, and now has supported my "isolation," and helped me follow her blazed path (in hiking boots) up Dorland Mountain.
Although no old cottage remains where I can burn my name into the resident's plaque along with hers, I will create another indelible way to leave my mark. Today, after settling in and embracing the silence, I eased my way back to story by stepping "ankle-deep in the [fictional] sea."
With love and gratitude I present one of Eloise's poems:
A TEXT OF BROKEN TEXTS
Page DuBois, Sappho Is Burning
Under every river is the floor of the world,
and curling downstream a beautiful ribbon
printed with the story
of where water comes from and returns.
Under the sea is the mother of the world
and from her fiery body islands appear,
spangled dots above the waves,
and begin their march away
from their birth ground.
From cliffs and shores, I’ve seen many islands,
sister and brother islands,
across a rocking plain of water.
Long sweeps of waves mark their beaches
like brush strokes, leaving a hint at the tide line
of a poem taken back into the body
of the sea time and time again.
Who speaks for anything? Who can hold
the paper or the brush long enough?
Is not everything we know a little island
set off from something larger,
a shoreline to walk while thinking,
while imagining?
Doesn’t every story begin ankle-deep in the sea?
The Islands Project: Poems For Sappho (Red Hen Press 2007)
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