Sure enough, Dottie went to see/read my poems at the Gibbes Museum, bought my first book, and showed up at my door on Sullivan’s Island with the book and a bottle of wine and she asked me if she could include one of my poems in the front of her forthcoming novel, Plantation. It was as if we had both been writing about the same place at the same time. Dottie said that I could say everything she wanted to say in just a handful of words. So, my poem “River” appeared in the front of Dottie’s novel Plantation. The first print run was 800,000 copies. That’s a lot of eyes on a poem!
We became fast friends, and after that I was sent galleys and wrote the poem after reading the draft of Dottie’s novels: Shem Creek, Isle of Palms, Pawley’s Island, etc. It was such an honor to be included in her books, and I am forever grateful. I used to tell people that Dottie was my biggest fan, and she was. When I was appointed Poet Laureate of South Carolina in 2003 she sent me a case of wine and a set of wineglasses engraved with the words “Sullivan’s Island”; she framed and proudly displayed the broadside of the first inaugural poem I wrote, “Rivers of Wind.”
Our children became friends and remain friends today. Victoria’s first prom date was with my son Hunter, and my son Taylor was an usher in Liam’s wedding. Dottie and Peter folded us into family gatherings and other occasions. The love and generosity were boundless. A couple of years after we met, my husband and I had serious pneumonia at Thanksgiving. Not only did Dottie drop everything and make homemade chicken soup to “cure” me, she and her sister Lynn made an entire Thanksgiving dinner for our family and brought it over to our house. I can still remember listening to Dottie on the phone telling our son Hunter how to baste a turkey.
My heart is filled with memories of my dear friend. I miss her so much, and I still pick up my phone to call or text her and then I remember that she’s gone. I open one of her books; I hear her husky voice reading the passage. I see her beautiful smile, and she is with me, and we are laughing like we always did.
Poems
“REUNION BEACH”
The sea is calling us
home. There is nothing
stronger than that
pull; each wave dispelling
the patient passage
of time. No
beginning, no end
in the horizon’s blur,
where gull feathers
and stars are caught
in wind, swirling
above miles of sand
holding a crush
of memories.
Sandpipers scattered
at the edges
of low tide; green
ribboned steams
of seaweed
sliding
beneath your feet
as you took your first
stumbling steps
toward the sweep
of sea. Your mothers’
hands on either side
holding you up
like warm wings.
So many hours
lost in the long
sun, dribbling
watery sand
onto castle walls
gathering shells in buckets.
A red sneakerful carried
home, where bleached star-
fish lined windowsills
and brown conches circled
the garden like guards.
Your favorite grey whelk
held to your ear
before you could sleep.
You learned patience, walking
slowly through shallow water
until you found the row
of sand dollars, cold
beneath your feet,
picking one up with your toes
holding it like a prize.
Summer days spinning
cartwheels in one direction,
body surfing until the sun
dissolved over the city
and shrimp boats
lit up in a line like
a string of low-lying stars.
Carving the name
of your first crush
into the hard sand
far from the tide line,
you smoked your first Marlboro
on the overgrown path
through wondering dunes.
Standing at water’s edge
with your school friends,
you watched blue and rust
cargo ships slide by the island,
wondering what lay below,
dreaming of wherever
they came from.
You brought us
the world
of this island,
its wax myrtles
and palmettos,
pelicans
flying low
along the shoreline—
each beloved object
of your home place
lining the pages
of your stories
like sand scattered
between sentences.
We will return
in September,
the month of your birth,
the month
of your death.
We will retrace your
footsteps, watch
dolphins dip in
and out of waves, as if
they are following us,
hear your laughter as gulls
call back and forth
beneath wisps
of clouds, where we
will see you
in the radiant light.
“RIVER” FROM PLANTATION
The river is a woman who is never idle.
Into her feathering water
fall petals and bones
of earth’s shed skins.
While all around her edges
men are carving altars,
the river gathers flotsam,
branches of time, and clouds
loosening the robes of their reflections.
Her dress is decoupage—
yellow clustering leaves,
ashes, paper, tin, and dung.
Wine dark honey for the world,
sweet blood of seeping magma
pulsing above the carbon starred
sediment. Striped with settled skulls,
wing, and leaf spine: the river
is an open-minded graveyard.
Listen to the music
of sunlight spreading
inside her crystal cells.
Magnet, clock, cradle
for the wind, the river holds a cup
filling with miles of rain.
But when the river sleeps,
her celestial children
break the sticks of gravity,
grab fistfuls of fish
scented amber clotted with diamonds,
ferns, and petalling clouds;
adorn bracelets of woven rain,
rise with islands of sweet grass
and stars strung to their backs
to wander over the scarred surface
of the earth, like their mothers
simply searching for the sea.
“TOWARD THE SEA” FROM BULL’S ISLAND
The wind is an empty place.
You enter expecting something softened by the sea.
A piece of cedar shaped into a body
you once loved. Perhaps the hand that held you
from a distance or the face that simply
held you here. Still moving in and out of time
during the hour when night meets day,
you try to find your bearings.
You pick up objects. You want to remember.
Jagged edged rocks in the palm of your hand.
You hold them up in the moonlight.
They are earthbound, filling with sky.
You walk on further, pause to scoop tiny iridescent
shells, the colors of cream and roses.
Little by little the air brightens into hours,
which are either empty or full of all the things
you love and remember, depending
on which direction the wind is coming from.
“IN THE DREAM OF THE SEA” FROM THE LAND OF MANGO SUNSETS
I call you from the open water
surrounding us, speaking
across divided lives.
I call you
from the waves
that always have direction.
Where strings of morning glory
hold the dunes in place,
I call. In winter,
when wind pours
through cracks in the walls.
Inside, I call
although my voice
has
