The Dark Sea
Prema and Pat: Photography by Peter Schneider
For over ten years, the writing with founder Pat Schneider* in her weekly Amherst Writers & Artists* workshops ended at ten-thirty p.m. when, if not with words then with a look as a reminder, her message to me was to drive home safely. Responding to what each of us wrote—which we held in confidence—Pat knew the span of my emotionality, and others reflected back the use of nature and sensuality in my imagery. Each night, as I drove the forty-five minutes home, first on Route 9, bordered by fields with a few houses, then on I-91 South to Longmeadow, when passing the Oxbow* on my right, to my left night clouds shimmered in unnamed lakes above.
We lie on the bed in shadows
the moonless night blind
to our curves.
The ivory lamp dimmed
holds light like a net,
as naked, we’re pulled
from the dark sea.
Hair curls and slips
through our fingers.
In the undertow, fingernails
drag like shells.
Ripples ride out
from the twin islands of nipples
to the hips’ high ridges.
Dimpled by kisses
we row hard
into the waves.*
My realization is, “In the private world of creative and journal writing, whether personal or in workshops, we are free to explore all that flows through the multi-faceted lives we live both in reality and in imagination.”
*http://www.amherstwriters.com/
*Published in Peregrine, 1993
*The crescent-shaped lake that sometimes rejoins the parent Connecticut River