The Language Issue

I was given this blog as a birthday gift by a good friend and co-worker. Val had apparently grown weary of hearing my endless babble about wanting to start a blog and not having the time to get it started...so she created it for me, named it and sent it to me in an e-card. Way to go, Val! I like the name, and feel honored that Val "gets" me. (I think we are from the same tribe.) I've worked on it a little since receiving it this week, copied and deleted her birthday message blog, most of her profile words (she referred amongst other things to my penchant for taking cloud pictures) and added a lot of my own. Like most things, this blog is a work in progress...

So now I would like to launch this gift blog with the words of a wonderful Irish poet...words that I responded to immediately the first time I read them...

THE LANGUAGE ISSUE

I place my hope on the water
in this little boat
of the language, the way a body might put
an infant

in a basket of intertwined
iris leaves,
its underside proofed
with bitumen and pitch,
then set the whole thing down amidst
the sedge
and bulrushes by the edge
of a river

only to have it borne hither and thither
not knowing where it might end up;
in the lap, perhaps,
of some Pharaoh's daughter.

Nuala Di Dhomhnaill