REMEMBERING ADRIENNE RICH 1929-2012

I remember Adrienne Rich as a powerful mentor of visionary clarity. Her wisdom will always be with me. As my friend the poet Shauna Paull says; "her language holds us together in our work and our singing".

Here is a piece I wrote two years ago:

for Adrienne Rich

In the year of her Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry

lifetime achievement award

Lemon trees in twilight. Dusk bruising the cadmium fruit

with purple shadow

In that golden hour light soothed

like a hand

your face in profile as we sat together

on your covered verandah, silently conversing.

I was just a kid who couldn’t find her tongue,

who couldn’t breathe

too shy to stay inside,

to join the voices of poets gathered

in your home

to speak of politics, injustice, the erasure of women,

words and power

Dream(s) of a Common Language.

Together, long ago, evening coming down

quiet but for cicadas

squeak of your rocker, forward and back, time between us slow as a Southern river.

You knew nothing of me,

I was just a kid who wanted to confess

I still remember how deeply you listened, how you heard

my yearning

how, for a moment you held; “I write”

like holy communion

between us, your words slender thread in the dark

flowing unbroken into the future

“Keep on. Keep on writing”, you said

in that leafed temple of stillness.

And I have.

And I have, and you will never know what glow you left,

what fragment of fire embedded in my flesh. What seed, what ember undiminished has become the bright and sacred fruit, grown from this root the strong branch holding both the bitter and the sweet.

Gabryel Harrison

June, 2010