Beginning My Life's Work

The start of a project I intend to craft for the rest of my days

Mar 13, 2023

Hello friends,

This past summer, I read an excerpt from Gloria Gervitz’s poem Migrations. The excerpt is longer than most, but that’s only because the entire poem is hundreds of pages long written over the course of 44 years. I haven’t read the entire thing yet, which Mark Schafer translated into English, but I can’t wait to get my hands on it.

I don’t want to dig into the poem here, but I bring it up because it inspired me. Immediately after reading the excerpt, I created a note in my phone titled only “Long” and began writing the poem of my life. What I have so far is not even as lengthy as the Migrations excerpt, but I hope that 44 years from now I, too, will have brought forth a similarly epic journey.

Here is the beginning of my life’s story.

I came into this world screaming,
exhausting my voice before I knew
it was mine. 

A native Floridian, a daughter of
saltwater and citrus, of sunshine and magnolias.
I settled in the scent of jasmine and rested
in the large leathery leaves of seagrapes.

Where the waves sweep gently, tiny coquina clams
whisper from beneath the intertidal shore, unseen but
inviting. Fingers and toes wriggle deep, searching
for the gems of the beach. The receding tide reveals
colonies of pink, blue, yellow, white, purple, orange, red, brown
burrowing back down into the safety of the sand.

At night, ghost crabs emerge like anxieties
in my mind. On the beach, they crawl from
their sandy burrows to begin their nocturnal hunt;
Coquina jewels make for tasty morsels. To the clams,
I must seem like a scavenging ghost, my human hands
as capable as crushing claws. But everyone needs
to eat. Carrion and detritus nourish just as well
as shimmering bivalve mollusks. Sometimes, the spirits
in my head help clean things up. They growl 
at my negative thoughts like ghost crabs gnashing
their stomach-teeth to ward off the unwanted.

As a child, Florida initiated me
into a life of wonder and struggle.
Sandspur grasses anchor dunes in place, while
their spiky seeds pierce bare feet and
unsuspecting knees. Slivers of wood splinters
and fire ant stings burn like the beauty
of the setting sun.

One night, as a storm rolled in, my father
put me on his hip and carried me outside.
As we stood in the street, the darkness
and humidity pressed against us from all sides.
Thunder rumbled, low and menacing, as
lightning flashes lit up the night. I buried
my head in my dad’s shoulder, afraid
of the fire in the sky.

“Don’t be scared,” Dad chuckled.
“Look how beautiful it is.” Now,
thunder claps and lightning strikes
lull me to sleep like the songs
my grandmother used to sing.

That’s it for now! I’m already enjoying this project and the freedom to let my mind wander. I didn’t intend to write a love letter to Florida, but the early stanzas are trending in that direction. I can’t wait to look at this decades from now and see where my mind was. I’ll definitely share more of this as I go along. It will be like a serialized memoir that unfolds in real time. Let me know what you think.

Until next time,
Yardena

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