I would like to dedicate this week's poem to my father and my son. Both are craftsmen in wood. My father was a fine cabinet maker and master carpenter before he retired. My son is a designer and builder of beautiful, hand crafted furniture. As Sackville-West, a poetic craftsman herself, points out in her insightful poem, they "share a knowledge" that only craftsmen can understand. Both pursued other careers first, but each eventually felt the need to work with their hands; to use tools; to create; to make beautiful, functional things. How lucky they are. While I have no comparable skills, I am lucky to have craftsmen such as them as a part of my life.

It is unfortunate, but probably understandable, that Vita (Victoria Mary) Sackville-West is best remembered today for her unconventional life style and "affairs of the heart," which in her case were with a number of well known women, including Hilda Matheson, head of the BBC Talks Department; Mary Campbell, wife of the poet Roy Campbell, whose work can be found in these pages; Violet (Keppel) Trefusis (with whom she once "eloped" to France in a "flight to freedom"), wife of Denys Trefusis, daughter of Alice Keppel (who was mistress to Edward VII); and, of course, Virginia Woolf, who used Sackville-West as the model for Orlando in her novel by that name. As a sign of the times, Ms. Sackville-West did not, of course, marry any of her lovers, but was instead, at the age of 21, married to the diplomat and critic Harold Nicolson, with whom she had two children (the art critic Benedict Nicolson and the publisher Nigel Nicolson), in spite of the fact that Harold was more attracted to men than women.

I said "unfortunate" in the above paragraph because Ms. Sackville-West was an accomplished author and poet, who deserves to be best remembered for his literary skills. She wrote dozens of volumes of poetry, 13 full length novels, three volumes of short stories, and many historical and biographical works. And to top off this highly productive literary effort, during the last two decades of her life, she was widely known and loved for the gardening column she wrote for the "Observer." These articles were eventually compiled into three immensely popular books. All were based on Vita and Harold's first country home, Long Barn, and then their garden at Sissinghurst, Kent, which is now a national attraction, having been transferred to the National Trust in 1967, five years after Vita's death.

I hope you enjoy this poem as much as I do. God willing, we will visit the poetry of Vita Sackville-West in these pages several more times in the future.