The following poem by Beth Clifford,* a long-term member of my writing group Longmeadow Writers & Artists, was given to me by Beth on my move to a new life in Florida. It would come with me to India in a very small collection of treasured items that helped me stay afloat emotionally in that much bigger move to a far different life from what I had known. This year, Beth’s writing arrived again in my life in the form of a praise comment for my forthcoming book, A Flower for God. It moved me with its insight, clarity, and metaphor. You will find it on the back cover. It also sent me on a hunt for her poem from long ago, “For Barbara,” from 1995, which I happily found. In her writing, I see what I know to be me, yet cannot describe in my writing.
For Barbara
She mentions her daughter’s name is Beth
When I call to reserve a seat in her workshop.
She tells me open handedly there might only
Be us two. Others have called but no definites
For a Saturday afternoon of Spiritual Journaling.
I hang up wondering how definite I am . . .
How willing I should be to entrust my rusty skills
To a woman incapable of direct answers to linear questions.
The workshop works well. There are three of us.
We write through meditation, stand before imagined
Open doors. I feel craft returning and she tells me
Where she sees it. She is all gentleness and specificity.
She is also a writer. She understands and listens
And has to be told to give us more time to talk about her
Poems.
She berates her heavy labor to produce narrative
While her images fly off the page, take our breath away.
She tones, overtones and sees auras in this house
In a tree-lined neighborhood of Rotarians and golfers.
She has dislocated herself not by moving but by changing.
We let go slowly. Some of us strain to hold her in place.
She doesn’t break away. She bends. And stretches us
To a new collective height and weight.
She found us each a writer wanting to be told
“There is a place for you and your work.”
She leaves a community that makes that place for ourselves
and others.
My realization is, “Gifts of ability are born within each. At times, another’s may deeply move us by revealing us through a different lens of understanding.”
* Beth Clifford is an MFA student at Bay Path University in Massachusetts.