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."