World, oh world

Eels leap toward the light, as if

it were love.  Wild screams

over the St. George peninsula,

lightning like a rifle at my side.

Wind thrashes the imagined

order, drafts toward upheaval.

The sea itself ventures out,

shudders.  Compared with yesterday’s

balm, that I can no longer think of, this

weather defines the knot tangling

within me.  No bird will call today. 

Not the osprey, nor lonely guillemot.

The world erodes toward sorrow.  What

can be done, can I do? I am ironing

the pillowcases.  I have always been

ironing the pillowcases.

But When I Came To

Sandy Weisman is a poet and visual artist, who currently makes artist books and mixed media collages.  She is interested in the interplay between word and image, incorporating her own poetry into her visual art.  Weisman has a background in textiles and art education.  Her work has been shown in the Boston area where she maintained a studio for many years, and her poetry has been included in several journals and anthologies in more recent years.

Weisman moved to Maine in 2010 after leaving her work at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, where she was the Director of Education in the Curatorial Programs office. She is the owner of 26 Split Rock Cove in South Thomaston, (www.26splitrockcove.com ) a private artist studio space, retreat, and workshop venue.

But when I came to

what I’d been told

and found it

to be untrue, untrue

over and over and finally

mostly untrue, with some truth

mixed in – and now I can see

more of it to be mistaken for truth

and I had not been allowed to judge it

for myself, so I threw it

all out, as much of it as I could

throw out without throwing

my very self out.

I began again

to teach myself

and found so many thoughts

all different sorts of thoughts are true

and not true at the same time

and I could finally agree with myself

that what I had been told

was the way it was.

Shivering

Transformations

We tell stories.

We tell stories to make sense of our lives.

We tell stories to communicate our experience of being alive.

We tell stories in our own distinct voice. Our own unique rhythm and tonality.

Transformations is a weekly story-telling column. The stories are written by community members who are my students. Our stories will be about family, love, loss and good times. We hope to make you laugh and cry. Maybe we will convince you to tell your stories.

— Kathrin Seitz

“Everyone, when they get quiet, when they become desperately honest with themselves, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there.” — Henry Miller

Kathrin Seitz teaches Method Writing in Rockport, New York City and Florida. She can be reached at kathrin@kathrinseitz.com.

Morning begins dark indigo,

cobalt, cerulean, sapphire, royal,

azure – the fleshy rim of light

along the back.  Clouds chug by. 

When children color

they never blue this space

between the earth and the top

of the paper, they call sky.

From my bed the steely ocean’s

sheen, shivering – only birds punctuate

this blank heaven from which our dead

mothers look after us.

Blizzard

Coronets of clouds, blasts of breath,

comes a Nor’easter and fury

howling at the corner of my house

snow just one part, evidence

that whites out the familiar. 

TV brings news while I watch the facts

outside – boundaries that disappear.

First the stone wall, its geometry

no longer hard edged, vertical.  Gone

now the garage door, erased.

And gone the neighbors’ houses,

my world closing in – a hearth holding

 – and empty of the living.

I am afraid more than once of this

wildness that does not care for me,

that spends itself on itself.

No dog or cat or deer about, no tracks

of rabbit or squirrel or fox or geese.

Is this beauty, these screaming gods,

this mad work?  When will I again

praise the world and my good fortune.