History is a yahrzeit candle

[sovay]

Jane Yolen has died. Her books were some of the first I read. Even with my library in storage, I can see several of her titles just by turning my head. Her shadow sisters got into my Jewish demons. She ushered me through the corridors of the sea. I had the fortune of sharing some panels with her; I did have the chance to tell her how much of my sense of story she had shaped. Tam Lin and Commander Toad, White Jenna and Merlin, dragons and owls and selkies and golems and cats and always, unsentimentally, words. Which remain, but it still feels like a great light blown out.

I saw a sailor once
shed his skin
as quickly as a crab
sloughs its shell.
He danced alone,
easy in his bones,
amid the coral memories
of his sunken ship.
When he opened his mouth,
little colored fish
swam in and out,
avoiding his brittle teeth,
his stripped and shining jaw.
They were quick and bright
as laughter,
running their zigzag course
through the silent syncopation
of the sea.

—Jane Yolen, "Metamorphosis" (1982)