Our brains are poor computers. They are more like a kind of salad, with everything we know tossed and mixed around with every other thing we know. The fact is, we don’t know what it is we know until we take the time to sort it out by writing it down. This is another of poetry’s uses.

Diane Dolphin lost her husband in 2006. In the muddle of her devastating grief, she came to realize that writing helped her to process events and emotions, and that her sorrow, as intense as it was, was also providing her with new appreciation for her friends, family, for her life — all the more in knowing now how quickly a life flies by. As she says of her poem, “Recipe”:

“The night I wrote this, I had driven home from the URI Summer Writer’s Conference. I was tired and there was nothing fresh to cook. I debated getting back into my car to go to the store. But the smell of the wilted basil was so enticing. As I sliced the overripe tomato and the seeds spilled out, I was taken by the creative process unleashed in preparing this meal with these fruits of the garden that were past their prime, that I had almost given up on. It seemed to mirror where I was creatively, attempting to bear fruit from my loss even when I wasn’t sure it would be particularly fruitful.”

It was. “Recipe” recently won second prize in competition with submissions from around the country in the Writer’s Circle’s first annual National Poetry Contest.

Diane has worked as a writer and video producer, and has directed many television documentaries, including Beacon on the Bluff: The Rescue of the Southeast Lighthouse, which aired on several PBS stations. She lives with her dogs in an 1813 stone house on a pond in Smithfield and is currently working on her master’s degree in communications at URI.

I’ve also included Diane’s short poem, “August,” since it so perfectly frames the season, explaining all we need to know in nine little lines.Recipe

Basil plant, wilted

over, its last gasp

intense, pungent and sweet.

Brittle skin giving way

to shriveled clove, green

shoots through the heart.

Tomato, heavy,

soft and bruised, still

clinging to cut vine.

Tomorrow will be too late.

I water the basil,

hoping to

revive it and

draw a knife, blood red

meat and seeds

spilling

onto the cutting board.

— Diane DolphinAugust

The air so thick

you suck it through your teeth like a lime gin jello shot.

Except for the lithe and lightly powdered

ladies in rainbow sherbet sun

dresses who part their

watermelon flavored

lips ever so

slightly and

sip it.

— Diane Dolphin