blessing the boats
by Lucille Clifton
(at St. Mary's) may the tide that is entering even now the lip of our understanding carry you out beyond the face of fear may you kiss the wind then turn from it certain that it will love your back may you open your eyes to water water waving forever and may you in your innocence sail through this to that

From: "blessing the boats - Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More."

At St. Mary's College of Maryland, my junior and senior years were consumed with a project that examined the cathartic experiential benefits of poetry readings for author and audience. That was also the year I worked as a Patient Advocate (the night shift) in our local community acute care hospital, most often in the Emergency Department. 

I had a night class with poet Lucille Clifton. There were only 7 of us, and each week our poems were ripped to shreds by one another, sometimes - seldom - reconstructed into something beautiful, terrible, or, more often, mediocre.

Lucille taught me to love the feeling of the wind at my back during times of change, even when it felt more like a tsunami than a tender evening breeze.

Because of Lucille I didn't take my writing too lightly - nor too seriously - but just seriously enough. (Poets have an unfortunate tendency to ballast their public personas with more weight and gravitas than their ethos earns).

Because of Lucille I stopped writing just for me, and started writing for others.

Because of Lucille I came to California - now home - for the first time in the summer of 2003, to the Squaw Valley Community of Writers' "Writing the Medical Experience" workshop.

I wandered around Truckee in a daze. I'd done nothing but have a car accident. What right did I have to be there, a lazy college kid, surrounded by brilliant personalities and wordplay at every turn?

If only I had known then the intense redirection that would occur as a result of that 2 weeks living and working amongst poets including Louise Gluck and Rafael Campo, plus medical students and doctors from all over the country, I may not have *wasted* so much time trying to tell myself one couldn't possibly make a living from creating and communicating the value of a single individual's learning about what it means to be sick, and what it means to live well.

Because of Lucille I stopped hiding from myself and began to write with gut-wrenching honesty. The way she taught me to write, about my life and desires, informed the way that I speak now - to audiences, to friends, to family, to lovers and loved ones.

Lucille, you have sailed through this to that. 

I wish I had more eloquence to give you. But you were always so adept at seeing through word-strata deep into the bleeding heart of a thing.

I hope the water was smooth, my friend - near the end - for your journey.

Thank you.