Recollections

Recalling Nancy Tilden, Teacher…

and the certainty in the light in her eyes

of permissions

to sing

in the light in her eyes come from so deep

no room was left for breath

other than that—

for the beauty of the branch to last

those eyes said it’s the roots

that reach the source

that sustains true song

**

In Japan once, along the China Sea,

looking out at the shadow of Sado Island,

as so many others have done,

poets and brothers and teachers,

I looked out and felt that chasm

of exile, that distance of singular decision

and the empathy that traverses that misted vision

that connects

all the world over

such solitary shores.