Preface
Some people are not easily framed, why would we want to? Who is regulated to one definition? Their essence lies not in a single quality, but in the sustained physical and mental tension between opposites: intellect and instinct, discipline and desire, resilience and sensitivity. A struggle of philosophy, will, hope, and merit.
This is a portrait, in words and images, of such a woman. It is an exploration of a mind, shared through her words, honed on literature, with a heart that has chosen kindness as its most deliberate practice. She moves through the world with the analytical precision of a scholar and the weathered grace of someone who understands cost, who has parsed the grammar of both ecstasy and pain.
The woman here is both an archetype and individual. She is built from leather and lace, footnotes and moss, the shock of red and the patience of green. I admire her not for any simplistic strength, but for the complexity she sustains, for the world she has built in the balance of the “all in all”.
What follows is an offering to her: a poem, and a gallery of moments that seek to hold her brilliant, contradictory, and beautiful light.
Please take a few moments to read her amazing work. Helen Higgins
Helen
She holds a stiffness,
not of pride,
but of the spine
that keeps the ledger
of the heart and heads in line.
Leather jacket, wedding dress,
shoes that dance.
A softness, not of yield,
enhance her feminine drive.
She wonders musky corridors
where hidden narratives live.
Unseen? Perhaps…
But not unbuilt, or small.
Her world is in the tension
of the all in all.
Her speech: evocative, erotic footnotes
in square domestic text.
the heart that breaks,
then chooses bravely
what to do next.
Red is the want.
The arterial, the thrill,
penned in a margin,
noted sharply with skill.
Yes, here. Precisely here.
a line from Donne
cuts the afternoon in half.
Her secret, vivid paragraph.
Though green is her life:
a little boy’s discarded sock,
doctoral patience,
moss on rock,
dinner steam on a window,
softening her view,
discipline to see the only,
complicated whispered truth
to the end, all the way through.
She mends with sentences.
She understands the loom.
Her kindness is not a weakness,
a decision, worn smooth,
a stone in the pocket of a coat,
a weight she chooses,
knowing it will wear
the cloth too thin.
It leaves her open
to the weather,
rain clouds moving in.
to the sudden chill
when a glance is glib.
She remarks sharply:
her soul she will not give.
Let us not speak
of Helen’s mind
as a sharp, cruel,
dark thing.
She takes in
Shakespeare’s rot,
Sade’s bleak
painful seed,
the formal perfume of a rose,
the root’s blackened need.
She meets the words
where they are,
where they dare to breathe
then renders them anew.
she strikes their soul,
sonnets of spirits renewed.
She catalyzes Eros
in iambic pentameter,
knows the precise
weight of a word
like lasciviousness
on the tongue.
Can parse the grammar
of a touch
from a Brontë or a Bataille,
but flinches at the syntax
of a headless, rendered plea.
It is an honor to have met you here.
Thank you for reading I appreciate your time. Many blessings.
This feels less like a poem about Helen and more like a way of standing beside her — attentive, unflattening, unwilling to simplify.
I was especially struck by the way tension is treated here not as conflict, but as craft: leather and lace, red and green, discipline and want — all held without apology.
There’s a deep respect in this writing for the cost of kindness, and for intellect that doesn’t sever itself from weather, bodies, or care.
Thank you for offering a portrait that refuses the easy outline and chooses fidelity instead, Dorie.
Very beautifully written. Helen is awesome.