My aunt gave me the sea in a book big as me. Curled in a chair, I wandered tidal pools despite the Christmas chill held hermit crabs and starfish inhaled salt air. I walked that book’s pages with childlike devotion an eight-year-old explorer baby beach comber. Robert Frost’s snow drifted into my 4th grade class and I listen for his horse’s bells as I practiced writing and first used an ink pen. Line by cursive line his poetry became mine along with the smell of ink, the feel of good paper, the love of pens. I began my own poems in solitude, sweet solitude…
