My name is Melba Joyce Boyd, and I'm reading wavelengths inside sunsets on Lake Huron.

Red Brightens blue cools, yellow highlights, moods, defining and contouring, shades of black space enveloping a planet oscillating within a spectrum of light and sight.

Violets peak between leaves, dandelion blooms intervene between blades of grass revolting against human control of green space, illuminating the black valance of lambda reflections of sunsets sinking beneath the waterline of Lake Huron as the planet rotates indefinitely indefinitely indifferent to time and human ignorance, space frames the moon refracting rainbows while owls perch inside night hunting prey.

As we huddle around fire, illuminating a small circle to protect our vulnerability without sight of colors that shape and define life invisible in the dark Red bleeds into blue, purple fractures into lilac and green springs into trees confirming us and belief in rebirth and renewal when yellow light returns at sunrise to assure and to affirm life, Oh, man.

Melba, that poem.

Wow.

Such beautiful images Talk to me about it.

How did that come?

Come up?

How did that come out of you?

Actually.

It was it was instigated by an abstract painting by an Atlanta area painter by the name of Deanna Sirlin And I just sort of went off of some of the colors and gestures of her colors and her lines, and it seemed to melt into the sunset on Lake Huron which are fabulous as every body knows.

They're all different.

They're like snowflakes.

And then it sort of moved into the experience of being on the shoreline and communing with nature and being a part of nature.

I feel like I always want to live next to water.

But I wanted to talk a little bit more about your poetry.

There's so much music in the work that you produce, not only in the poem that you presented, but also just in other poems that I've seen And I've often even seen you perform with musicians.

Well, the truth of the matter is, in terms of performance and creativity, I was a musician before I was a writer I was always intimidated by literature.

I never thought I could be a writer until I went to university.

Even I had been encouraged by teachers.

And I found, though, that when I became an English major and I started writing that I was very much concerned and dependent on sound.

Sound is a big part of the language for me as opposed to not just that there's no no meaning or imagery, course there's a lot of imagery in it.

But for me, the sound is so much of the artistic and esthetic experience, because even when someone's listening to a poem, they may not know that particular experience, but hopefully they can enjoy the sounds that I'm sharing with them, you know, in the language.

And I've definitely seen those performance as they're so beautiful to see.

But you also talked about, you know, being mentored by writers and you have been mentored by one of the greatest writers to come out of Detroit, Michigan, Dudley Randall, who was the first poet laureate of Detroit, You were directly mentored and then went on to be his biographer.

Like, how is it that you're able to, like, balance that historical responsibility along with, you know, honoring the poetry and writing through the poems and things like that?

How are you able to balance those two things as a scholar and and a creative?

I write about poets as a poet.

I write from the inside out and not from the outside coming in or trying to put something on it.

I'm more interested in sharing an understanding of the creative process rather than the creative product.

And it was something that I felt and feel that's important.

And as a teacher, you know, and for other poets to understand, say the writing of Dudley Randall and I've written about Naomi Long Madgett I've written a biography on Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and I want them to understand the experience, the creative experience, and to be able to appreciate the complexity of the craft.

I want them to understand that, and I want them to be able to feel that.

when I started working with Dudley Randall, which was just purely by coincidence, I had been reading all these Broadside Press books because I had been studying black poetry, you know, And so I said, Oh, I'm going to go by, and I'm an English major.

I could be an editor, right?

So I boldly just drove over to his shop and, he hired me because he really did need the help.

He his desk was just just.

[Nandi] I can Imagine.

[Melba] Totally was overwhelming It's a wonder that the big wooden table didn't just crash So we're able to you were able to not only be mentored, but you were an editor for Broadside Press, during a really rich time in literature for particularly black literature, when a lot of black authors weren't being published nationally, they could come to a place like Broadside Press and find a home for their own writing.

And I feel like there's still sort of that happening in this area of a space for black poets to find voice and to express themselves.

But I don't want to lose sight of the fact that you have brought to us today two really incredible poems that are rooted in nature.

And the next one that you're going to read is even more thinking about the the possibility of a fleeting nature.

Can you talk to us a little bit about that poem that you're going to present?

Kim Voss, who the poem is dedicated to, was my cousin and she died from breast cancer.

And in my in my sense of things, I feel that this sort of increase in cancer and increase in disease and and right now, even the pandemic, I think these are all connected to the disorder of the planet, You know, I often say that the planet is it's got the flu and everything that's happening, you know, these crazy multiple hurricanes and this problem with the starfish, and I did.

And people talking about the problems of different species traveling up the Mississippi River, I knew about that.

And then there was a concern and it'll get into Lake Michigan and then those are real issues for me.

I think it should be the number one issue for really every human being on the planet.

And a lot of the other kinds of personal concerns or things that we get caught up in.

I think if we look more at the fact that our planet is in a crises, we would find those things to be fairly, you know, fairly trivial because then it would force us to care about each other because, you know, it's like we're all on the same ship.

The Return of Violet Starfish for Kimberly Combs Voss.

Yesterday, the news reported the absence of seasonal starfish from the Pacific coastline and that Asian carp invading the Mississippi River are swimming upstream to invade Lake Michigan.

Tragic planetary metaphors, signs of reversals of the natural order.

and a marriage of brillance that rendered a perfect child.

We cling to her balance and the afterglow of her luminous smile, taking us to joy, forcing retreats from sadness or to serious.

Even when she suffered her body's battles against the invasion of the unnatural, unrelenting disorder of disease.

Kim now resides within eternal space and in the comfort zone of grandmother love.

While we pray for faith and a future with fresh skies, clean seas, and the return of violet starfish lining the northwestern shoreline.