"When someone passes, I always find myself wondering which way is worse...the quick pass, that no one saw coming, or the lingering one...and in my own
life I can say both are awful in their way...we all will go to the stepping off place...it's just a matter of how...and when..."
from The Stepping Off Place, by Gala of the Garden
One: So Glad I Don't Do Poems Anymore
"Nothing is unattainable in solitude except sanity." Nietzsche
Early November, so late for the first day of Indian Summer!
Last year the lawns and fields were brown
though the prairie dogs still bark and bob in and out of sight
as I usurp their turf. My bold buddy
whose mounded hole is closest to the black paved path
stands his ground as always. We chat awhile
till I say Goodbye and he instantly vanishes.
Way over on the east side of the path a blonde girl
with her back turned stares into a clump of cottonwoods.
She is a slim and lovely sentinel warning an older and heavier woman
squatting in the grove. I hope (or not)
that a rascally rodent doesn't pop up and nip a chunk
out of one of her bounteous buns.
More than a week has gone by since the coercive cloud
of this first anniversary enshrouded me.
Cosmic inconsquential events--a total eclipse, the presidential
brouhaha--could not clear it away.
Your final days that distended into weeks
and weeks and weeks
Whoever said that death is the end?
[11/05/04--Denver CO]
Two: What can never be revived can sometimes be revisited
"Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward." Kierkegaard
This afternoon I went back for the first time.
The room where you last slept had a new occupant
who lay on her back as you did that December day
the hours shrinking as you became colder and darker.
It didn't occur to me then that I would never again
careen you down the long windowed hall
that looked out on the brown lawn toward the sun-white
mountains. (I pulled your hair and cried Toot-Toot
so that you would see the beauty outside
where you had not been for such a long time.
But you could only look contortedly
at the bleached and frightened old ladies
in their dilatory chairs.)
I returned this afternoon having finally learned
that I can never go back.
Never bring you back.
Never know or do anything of any value later.
What is past can never be revivified.
Yet what I now revisit is a stepping stone toward
Tomorrow.
[Denver CO, 11:05 PM, 3/30/04]
Three: Returned: "Address Unknown"
"For who can change with prayers and thanksgivings
The mystery of the cruelty of things." Swinburne
Stumbling through life, what little is left of it,
eyes bruised with tears, the past so blurred and irredeemable,
your presence always present, yet never recoverable--
I let it all well up.
You loved a mystery.
I would call: "It's a Mystery, Kiddie!"
You'd come and sit, eyes wide, transfixed,
never speaking till the show was over.
But in later years you could not wait:
"How does it end Davy?"
...I sneered inside myself and never told you.
And at the last, a couple of years of sleep and outrage.
The diatribes, decibels of unmeant hatred
until you'd wind down: "Why can't I stop?
Davy, why can't you make me stop?"
Your child's heart never holding a moment's hatred
abides no longer. You live in a brighter world
and no longer care. I dream that you
are raised now by those who have taught you how to play.
Your mother never did. She never cared.
I must go on in this place wherein I failed you.
Where history is never forgiven
and mystery never resolved.
[July 14, 2005]
....Betty Jean Elich Wendell, 3/11/1935 - 12/11/2003
