CDI: Poem by Helene Alalouf

Along the beach, footprints cross the sands

Out of time’s reach from distant lands.

Uncaught balls and soulless shoes.

Porcelain dolls and petrified news.

A lizard clutch purse, spectacles, and Boonton dishes.

Layers of life disperse, revealing immigrants’ work and wishes.

Charcoal and glass choices splayed by the skull of a bird.

Forgotten voices… yet their echoes are still heard.

This poem was written by Helene Alalouf, a participant in the Child Development Institute’s Empowering Teachers Program at Sarah Lawrence College, during a day-long Dead Horse Bay excursion and workshop led by Underwater New York. View photographs of some of the found objects that inspired her poem, collected and photographed by another CDI participant, here.