These pieces were written at Kathrin Seitz's one-day writing workshop, Writing From Place/Gathering Images. The class gathered at the beautiful Split Rock Cove artist’s retreat in South Thomaston in July, to explore the use of place, voice and image in writing. The landscape inspired these two writers to capture the day in the words below.

Wind
By Sandy Weisman

You have come as storm
today. Gentle has gone home.
Osprey, too. The kelp suffers
your beating. You are both conductor
and choreographer in this fierce dance
about physics, electricity, about muscle.
You are the drumming in my ears,
the howl across the cove. I remember,
as a child on another shore,
towels whipping off beach chairs,
rafts pitching down the beach.
I was afraid. Big wind – invisible
wind, marauder at the door.
What do you want of me?

Split Rock Cove
By Mary Bok

Here is a place ... Here is a moment. I breathe deeply the fresh salty air that whispers of a storm that will surely come and erase this blessed silence ... draw away this softly blowing breeze. The incoming tide laps at the stones on the beach, as it has done for a million years ... and the stones round off and gradually—very gradually—turn to sand.

I guess that I, too, am gradually, very gradually, turning to sand.

       The tides come and go, marking the days, feeding the earth, which will sow its seed, sleep in the dark of winter and sprout in the new spring ... All this in its own sweet silence ... Maybe I will be here next year to admire the blooming of that seed ... and, perhaps, to savor its fruit, when the sun has brought its sweet skin to a perfect red, winking out from beneath

the green shadows.

       They call this place Split Rock Cove. Somewhere—I don't know where—there must be a huge boulder that once upon a time, had a little crevice on its uppermost surface. Raindrops collected in that crevice shortly before

the November freeze.

       When the cold came, it took the rock by surprise and chilled it to its core and then some! The water shivered at first, as it cooled to freezing and then grew stiller and stiller, until its drops turned to crystals. Then, crystals bonded to one another until it became a whole, solid, vibrant thing ... As if it were living in the crevice of that rock. Then as the weather grew colder and colder, the block of crevice shaped ice swelled against the incredible chill. The rock was bigger ... the rock was mighty ... but the ice that had once been a puddle, remained true to itself, and became one with the very same cold that held it in its sway. The ice pressed hard against the rock ... and the rock pressed back, with all its might. But then, in the very darkest moment of the long, freezing cold night, there could be heard across the Cove and around the nearby farms and fishing shacks, the most amazing C-R-A-C-K!!!

       To some, that CRACK sounded like a shotgun, which could have been aimed at a hungry fox, who slunk away from John Flipperflopper's hen house, with a very dead chicken slung over his shoulder ... or, it could have been one of the Smither twins, practicing his aim in his grandpa's back pasture, shooting tin cans off the fence posts, by the light of the moon.

But you and I both know the truth of the matter: It was that powerful little puddle, having its way with the large, stubborn rock ... insistent ... persistent ... determined ... splitting the now famous rock in two!

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, a private artist studio space, retreat and workshop venue.

Mary Bok has always been interested in the magic of words as they relate and give voice to the thought that moves in each of us. As a child, she kept diaries and picture books that recorded something of her relationship to the world around her. Later, as a young adult, she wrote stories and poems, which mirrored this same connectedness; and even later, in the early 1970s, she began work with Ira Progoff, whose approach to journal keeping deepened her explorations. Bok has led Proprioceptive Writing workshops at Elderhostels in Maine and New Hampshire, the International Women's Writing Guild conference in Canaan, N.Y., the Center for Health and Healing in Rockland and at her home in Camden. Mary has been published in Village Soup and has assembled a collection of her work entitled, Unfolding Dreams.

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 are 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, editor, and Cheryl Durbas, co-editor

"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. Cheryl Durbas is a freelance personal assistant in the Midcoast area. She can be reached at cheryldurbas@tidewater.net.