(dedicated to Anahita Hamidi)
The young woman found herself floating
in a small dinghy some miles from shore—
oars gone, rudder broken,
a wild cloud on the horizon,
the bag of cookies almost empty—
I’ll write, she said. That’s what I’ll do.
And with some blue left in the sky, a bit of algae,
some heart’s blood and her imagination
she wrote and wrote.
Fish began gathering around the boat
to discuss the work amongst themselves.
Everyone’s a critic, she said.
I wonder what happened
to the young woman in the dinghy—
and if the fish were improved
by reading such a searing work—
and if the storm ever made it to shore
in the face of such a life?
Rhonda Palmer
