"Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere."
--G.K. Chesterton
"The man's body is sacred and the woman's body is sacred.../Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the well-off, just as much as you."
--Walt Whitman
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According to the Buddha, right speech is a statement that is timely, true, kind, helpful (connected to liberation), and spoken with a mind of good-will. Let us all try to observe this precept.
Becky Dennison Sakellariou is a poet who divides her time between New Hampshire and the village of Euboia in Greece. Her new collection, Earth Listening (Hobblebush Books, 2010), is a lyrical tribute to both landscapes and the fruit that springs from their stony soil. Among those fruits, metaphorically speaking, are the gifts of wisdom and acceptance of the passage of time. Somehow the heart stays open to love and beauty as mortality is faced. She kindly shares this poem below.
Stoning the Pool
I left all words
on the kitchen table
when they called my name.
I love words.
Words are the way
each idea comes to my tongue.
This idea needs no savoring.
Cancer tastes of fear
and fear will not
translate into echoes,
cadences, syllables.
The nurse said
all will be well
which is what I often tell
my friends who are in despair.
Her words sat
in the outer bowl of my ear,
rolling back and forth
like marbles in a dish. All is well was gone,
disintegrated at a word.
Who will come?
Who will call my name?
Is this the Grove of No Shadows?
What shapes sleep
beneath the silky surface
of this body of bloody water?
Who will excavate my grave
littered with olive pits,
fig seeds and shattered potsherds?
