On a breezy recent October day, two Bates colleagues, professor Ian Khara Ellasante and multimedia producer Theophil Syslo, headed to the Androscoggin River in nearby Greene.
There, they worked on a video project, a reading of Ellasante’s award-winning poem that evokes love for a grandfather, the ebb and flow of water, and the passage of “seasons for healing and tempering like flood following drought following flood.”
The poem, titled “grandfather: a dialect of water,” earned Ellasante, an assistant professor of gender and sexuality studies, first prize in a poetry-writing contest sponsored by the literary magazine New Millennium Writings.
Described by Alexis Williams, editor-in-chief of New Millennium Writings, as a “continuing ripple and flow of love and reverence,” the poem was inspired by Ellasante’s paternal grandfather, a man who “wept river water when he said his prayers” and who:
was the colors of the earth
who was all of its crimson clay blues and grey
Ellasante describes their late grandfather as “the epitome of integrity and tenderness, of grace, strength, and compassion.”
Though Ellasante’s grandfather died several years ago, they feel that “our conversations have continued in earnest as I consider all that he gave me. Maybe this is the way of grandfathers like him: to gift us with the best of themselves and write it permanently onto our hearts, to grow us and shape us like water.”
Video by Theophil Syslo/Bates College
grandfather: a dialect of water
i had one who fished rivers
through the night
who wept river water
when he said his prayers
my hand on his big knuckled heart
he would say cry with me
this is baptism: walk with me he would say
immerse your heart not your head
i had one who was the colors of the earth
who was all of its crimson clay blues and grey
this is Mississippi River mud he would say
each color in its turn turning the earth
and earth’s engine churning
days and years into the color of his hair
and into the deep shade of earth’s wet bridges
when his lost hair began to return
pray with me he would say
grandchildren i pray for you everyday
long of days grandfather
i want to know
the water memory loosening
a heavy tether in your voice
i had one who grew his hair long and thick
as wavy as a seaport rolling down his back
who had a story about the flood
that saved him and killed him
both in the same night
grandfather who knows the ways of water
and the ways of beauty i want to know
how do you keep a river
rising and surging like this
and why does it overflow you in these tears
come and see me he would say
watch the rain whisper it down from the clouds
let the thunder soften you toward quiet
sit with me he would say
grandfather of open spaces and tall trees
long of memory
long of lung
long of days sunlit and full of rain
how should i plant this seed i want to know
put it in the dirt and it will grow he would say
and keep it there until something becomes
something more
i want to know grandfather
why are we unbraiding
toward the water’s edge
and wait please
i have something more to say
i had one who rose at times with the haste
of a flood rising who at others lingered
like the stretch and stillness of a long drought
speak the ways of water to me grandfather
speak seasons for healing and tempering
like flood following drought following flood
i had one who knew balance and reasons
for unbalance of seeds in seasons
of reaping and then returning and then
i had one who grew quiet
and waited in the flickering light
grandfather sit with me
tell me
i want to know what is over there to see
let me look at you he would say
river banks are not meant to hold
cry with me walk with me
