Dear Margaret: Going to Newfoundland

Dear Margaret:

Your death made little fanfare in the world as David Kent notes, and that is perhaps as you wished it, but your memory lingers on in the minds of many poets -- kindred spirits of the word -- and I am one of them. Tomorrow I will board a plane to Newfoundland to meet other such spirits, friends who knew you in person or through your poems. We will meet in one of those 'person-freeing' silences you speak of in the paradoxical act of remembering you, you, who eschewed the limelight in every way! A group of poet-friends will gather together to talk about you and your work; I hope you don't mind. I traveled a journey with your poetry and archive this past month that was at times exhilarating and exasperating, but always revealing of a fierce intelligence and a dogged devotion to the art of poetry and the art of seeking God. In Newfoundland, I look forward to seeing that place you call "Ajar" --

A glistening sea spread under
the teal-blue sky,
level horizons all around. By
some eerie miracle
everything tilted towards the
edge-of-nothing end.

where:

The forecasts, all:
fair weather.

(AN, Vol 3, p.201)