In the Dew of Little Things¹

Usha Akella

And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit
--Kahlil Gibran

Sometimes, it is like this—very rarely and magically, some friendships are islands of peace we retreat to in the tumult of the world. In the visible world, our encounter was brief and only once in the likeliest of places that poets can find each other—a poetry festival—on the island of Granada, Nicaragua in 2010. And yet, it was long enough for us to know it would be enduring and was shared— perhaps, reflecting Marj’s email signature: “All flourishing is mutual” by Robin Wall Kimmerer. What is not so likely is that all souls must be drawn to each other even if vocations are shared. Paradoxically, language—with which poets forge so much of their lives—just to bring out the colors of an entire year’s sunsets—emanates first from the stirrings in a wordless realm. That realm, the soul is a flowering void, its silent wisdom recognizes a kindred spirit, and so with some, a bridge is formed not bound by duration, words, or material transactions but by resonance. And the warmest spontaneous indulgence of each other flies back and forth containing an empathetic energy of the heart and soul. With Marj, it is like this.

In the few days that I was associated with her in Granada, there was an evident sensitivity and alert intelligence that seemed to perceive the undercurrent in the drift of things. I noticed how she was tuned in to the unsaid in the said, how she sensed dynamics between people, and how she exuded a subtle compassion and a natural warmth devoid of artifice or strain. I remember holding the poetry book she gifted me, marveling at the title Skin of Water, and wondering about the sensibility that could wrought such evocative delicacy in words.

As I read her poetry in the forementioned book and later in Fishes of Light, it seems to me she is a poet so deeply aware of her aloneness in a rich universe of little things, an aloneness that contains all connections. Her poetry emerges from an awareness of sound and un-sound. Her poetry is testimonial that spirit and body, one, self and world, one—each channeling the other. And her poetry is said with such delicacy afraid to hurt the page it occupies, the lines touch you like a butterfly on the tip of a rose—consider just one line: you are goldened by my tongue, in ‘Elemental’. Sensuous, glorious, ripening the very act of reading.

In the decade that I have been connected to Marj, the word grace is the primary note that I associate with her. Grace is how she bears herself and conducts herself in the world. Grace, she recognizes as the primal note in the universe.

Happy Birthday dearest Marj. Your gracious soul, span of work, erudite scholarship and beautiful poetry are a refreshing abode for many—in the years gone by and in the years to come. An abode, I’ve had the honor to reside in from time to time. I conclude with your inscription in your book gifted to me: Granada is now the home of the spirit and we are in its quiet core: the center of poetry.

So be it, for long to come.

——

¹ For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed—Kahlil Gibran, from ‘On friendship’, The Prophet