Sophia’s Poems

My father’s death created a doorway, said Sophia, a path to follow– and I did. For years I wandered in a strange world, sinking to the bottom of dark holes, crawling on my hands and knees, trying to find my way through the dark. And then I found poetry. One by one my poems illuminated a path back to the everyday world. It is true: The antithesis of depression is creativity. She wrote these poems over a fifteen year period. She wrote in Argentina, Spain, the Basque Country, Wyoming, Arizona, California, the Grand Canyon and Colorado. I looked for him in the cante and baile of flamenco and in the Spanish and Basque languages. I caught glimpses of face, traces of his ghost. I studied the love letters he wrote to my mother from Peru. In the end I came up against the hugeness of the word dead . I hope these poems will guide my father home and help him to find peace.