UNBOUND
— for Billie Jeanne Underwood
Just stepped outside when no one was watching,
the screen door still swinging . . .
How could you be gone, truly? —
I think of you like Prometheus —
come from a dark place & carrying fire,
coming straight for us —
nimble feet, dark hair, dark eyes, huge smile,
smoke streaming from the stalk in your hand . . .
And in this world, you know,
the large catastrophes hunt their prey;
the slight erasures continue to erode my thought
to see everyone I love intact, and always so;
that hope a wisp of smoke dissolving on a late January afternoon,
& the sun going down. . .
But I know, deep-rooted, that
digging-down-rock-hard caliche lasts a good, long time,
but so do olive trees:
that we’ll see as we are seen, say, all of us,
with a clean & unsnarled remembrance;
for there we’ll be:
rivening up, like a bold blade of grass,
June flesh June fresh, and strong —
& what had been cleft apart,
heart from mind from soul,
will be a clearness, a joy, a simple moving line,
a thought-with-action, a once-more-just-for-the-pleasure-of-it —
& there we’ll be, laughing with relief,
no longer the light of a waning moon,
the light from an ebbing, far-flung star,
but who we were, who we are, who we really are,
beautiful, and shining, and new —
— Ellen Kartchner Gregory
Credit: Miguel Saavedra
***
Have You Had A Billie In Your Life?
Have you had a Billie in your life?
To loan you a favorite book
To campaign for the ERA
To do the Mexican hat dance?
To teach you how to Samba
To share a Tucson sunset
Or an Arizona thunderstorm
Or burritos at Molina’s?
Have you had a Billie in your life?
To argue politics with
Or what it means to be a feminist
Or the ethics of relationships?
Have you had a Billie in your life?
Making cookies with a grandchild
Comforting you through sorrows
Inspiring you to be your best self?
Have you had a Billie in your life?
— Kathleen Durning 27 February 2009
***
Perfection Wasted
And another regrettable thing about death
is the ceasing of your own brand of magic
which took a whole life to develop and market —
the quips, the witticisms, the slant
adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest
the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched
in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears,
their tears confused with their diamond earrings
their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat,
their response and your performance twinned.
The jokes over the phone. The memories packed
In the rapid-access file. The whole act.
Who will do it again? That’s it: no one;
imitators and descendants aren’t the same.
— John Updike, silenced 20 January 2009
Photo Credit: Miguel Saavedra, Spain
