My life has been/is abundant with good friends.
So many people have filled my days with laughter and love and kindness. Yes, some of these individuals have disappeared--through circumstance, time, and loss--but I still hold their memories dear, like rare stamps on old letters. A childhood friend who died of AIDS. A college friend who drowned in Lake Superior on a late summer night. A poet friend who battled cancer bravely, joyfully.
I try to honor all of them, every day.
Sharon Olds honors a lost childhood friend . . .
Best Friends
by: Sharon Olds
(for Elizabeth Ewer, 1942-51)
lank, glittering, greenish cap of your
gold hair. The last week of
your life, when I came each day after school,
I'd study the path to your front door,
the bricks laid close as your hairs. I'd try to
read the pattern, frowning down
for a sign.
The last day--there was not
a mark on that walk, not a stone out of place--
the nurses would not let me in.
We were nine. We had never mentioned death
or growing up. I had no more imagined
you dead
than you imagined me
a mother. But when I had a daughter
I named her for you, as if pulling you back
through a crack between the bricks.
She is ten now, Liddy.
She has outlived you, her dark hair gleaming like
the earth into which the path was pressed,
the path to you.
A polar vortex is setting up shop right now across a good portion of the United States, including my little portion of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Over the next couple days, temperatures and wind chills are going to reach 40 degrees below zero in some places. Schools have already begun cancelling classes, and several churches cancelled worship services this evening.
I'm not going to turn tonight's post into a maudlin reflection on loss. As I said, my life has been abundantly blessed with friendship. I truly don't know what I have done to deserve such a wealth of love. Perhaps because of my Catholic upbringing, I often feel . . . undeserving. I fuck up. A lot. I let people down. A lot. But I try my best to be a good, true, and loyal friend.
Tonight, I led a Zoom poetry workshop. Several close poet friends showed up. The evening's theme of "self worth." Basically, we all wrote praise poems about ourselves. That's a tall order for a person who doesn't even like looking at himself in the mirror. Suffice to say, it was struggle.
So, if you are friend of mine, thank you for overlooking my many failings. I treasure your love and support and infinite patience. If I've upset or angered or disappointed you in any way, please accept my apology. It wasn't my intention to harm you in any way. I cherish and honor your presence in my life.
Saint Marty honors one of his favorite poetic friends--Mary Oliver--with a poem based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:
Today is the birthday of Edgar Allan Poe. From 1949 to 2009, the "Poe Toaster," an unknown person, visited the grave of Edgar Allan Poet near midnight, leaving three roses and a half-filled bottle of cognac on Poe's grave. Make up a legend or strange story about a famous person or family member, and/or share a unique way to pay tribute to someone after he or she has died.
Mary Oliver Aria
by: Martin Achatz
My dog charged into the iceberg
of morning, her bark sharp
as a pickax, cracking nosebleed
air into shards. Mary, you
would have been right there
with her, the tail of your body
wagging, waiting for the ball
of day to be thrown so you
could chase it across the field
into the trees, the soft animal
of you hungry to connect
with this frozen world where
your imagination was always
most alive. I kneel at the edge
of Blackwater Pond, lower
my head to the water, lap
long and hard, tasting its
rocks and leaves and fire,
as you often did. I let its
winter rattle my ribs, fill
my blood with wild geese
crying for you over and over--
Mary Mary Mary Mary--
until something green
and beautiful begins
to thaw inside me.
❤️
ReplyDelete