Judy Wells was born in San Francisco and raised in Martinez, California.  She taught writing and literature at Bay Area colleges before a career as an Academic Counselor in the School of Extended Education at Saint Mary’s College of California, and as a faculty member of the Graduate Liberal Studies Program. 

She has published eleven collections of poetry including:  I Dream of Circus Characters, Little Lulu Talks with Vincent Van Gogh, Call Home, and Everything Irish. Wells is also co-editor of The Berkeley Literary Women’s Revolution, a chronicle of the founding of Women’s Studies in the Comparative Literature Department at UC Berkeley in the 70s. She was recently honored to read at the San Francisco Crossroads Irish-American Festival from her collection, The Glass Ship, in which an imaginary woman sailing captain visits a series of magical, “other world” islands—prose-poems inspired by ancient Irish voyager myths.

I saw it far out on the horizon, a blinding light.  As it came closer, I realized it was a magnificent sailing ship made completely of glass—glass sails, mast, hull—a dazzling spectacle in the sun.  At times, the glass ship reflected rainbow lights like a crystal.  I had heard stories of this legendary ship, though no one I knew had ever seen it, but here it was, bearing down on me in my small boat.

I looked up at the now looming ship and spotted a young man and woman on the deck, dressed completely in white. They were dancing, whirling slowly, waltzing to be exact.  I saw one face, then another, and was astonished to recognize my own parents.  A longing arose in me, and I called out to them.  They stopped and looked down at me curiously— my father with his slicked back hair, my mother with her black curly bob— and did not seem to recognize their daughter.  They resumed their positions, waltzing around the glass deck, a whirl of white, transfixed only by each other.

Gradually, I realized why they did not recognize me.  I had not yet been born.  Here were my parents deeply in love before they were married, before the four children began to come, before the toil of creating a home.

The glass ship sailed off with my dancing parents.  Its wake caused a slight rocking of my small skin boat before I was left alone on the still sea. 

Page 2

© Copyright, 2015, Judy Wells.
All rights reserved.