Breakwater Rock

<p>For years I had wanted to write a book of poems that would bring together geographically the two halves of my life first in the United States where I grew up and then in Europe where I now live. I was not sure how I would find the diversity of voices for such a project but then one day something totally unexpected occurred. As I was being wheeled into the operating room of a Swiss hospital a few words suddenly went through my head:</p><p></p><p>Exile</p><p>your former island</p><p>lets you go.</p><p></p><p>I have always been curious what I would think before losing consciousness and when I came to this time after my knee operation the strange words were still there still in the form of a stanza and soon other words began to appear as well. I realized at once what was happening and asked my wife for a piece of paper and something firm to write against. And so began The Turning of the Tide a poem I wrote upside down on my back from my bed in the hospital.</p><p></p><p>The poem turned out to be an announcement to myself of a homecoming both in space and in time to the town where I had come of age during what is still called the Vietnam War though it was not ever officially a war. I had scheduled the operation early enough so that I would be able to walk once more along the edge of the Sound where as a young man I had wandered alone and often at night trying to come to terms with the world before me. As a boy I had learned that a word like a country has a history of its own and I had mistakenly derived exile from the French of ex and île and falsely arrived at my former island; and now freed of falsehood here was the word again in a new yet familiar context. I realized that I had a start on the book that would bring the two continents - the two tectonic plates of my life - back together in space and time. Other poems began to appear some even before I had returned to my old hometown stepping stones of a sort and what I now had to do I saw was to put the separate stones together to make in other words a breakwater rock of my own something open to everyone protective and inviting entrance and exit at once.</p>