In memoriam, Paul Bouman, 1918–2019
There is a sacred place for quiet remembering
Sorrow here a little while
Kyries, soft like vesper sparrow
sing well into the evening
Listen to the solace of thanks
faithful to be
there in our heads
our understanding
Now resting
awake to the music
“It is only in light that the colour of a thing is seen. Hence our first task
is to explain what light is.”
—Aristotle, De Anima (On the Soul), translated by J. A. Smith
When my dog entered the house,
a lone, lost firefly came, too,
wings flapping so fast, I thought, at first,
a wasp was wandering in.
After the bug’s red head revealed
its true identity, I looked around
but found it nowhere. I wondered whether,
like King Hamlet’s ghost,
it bid adieu, paling
And when we watched the havoc as the blaze
plundered the ark of ages, did we mourn
the stained glass, paintings, statues that would burn,
or grudge the millions we would have to raise
to bring it back, which could have fed the poor?
The corpse of Notre Dame may waste for years,
languishing while the mobs and financiers
dispute if its maimed beauty should endure.
Unable to see far, I write
what’s near. How snow
responds to footprints and
the garden to a spade.
How my cat’s lion face
softens under my caress.
How words fall through me
like water, though some
thicken into thoughts
like scars. How, today,
when I complained of cold,
my husband covered me
with the old green blanket
and I napped and dreamed
of summer. How this afternoon
one robin, having arrived
too early, sits now on the
power line, thinking to himself
this is not so smart.
Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window
Vermeer (c. 1657–59)
Wanting to know what she knows,
he enters the painting. She stands
so still, so long, reading a letter
by borrowed light. It seems
she will read it forever.
For decades, Wild Dunes was our vacation home
until aging with the sea and sand and shifting
with the dunes and the wash of waves,
we surrendered as our beach, too, sifted away.
On our last morning walk with a gritty wind
at our backs, a covey of gulls no longer
amusing us with their squawking laughs
sat sleek and silent like sentinels facing into the wind.
In memoriam, Dean Peerman,
senior editor at the Christian Century
A Tiki hut sleeps
on the beach at a shabby resort—
unpainted weathered wood
propping up the grass roof over
a small sea of chairs and tables.
He treads along the woods and gravelly gravel roads
right after vigil, his Lectio Divina
fisted arms in balance and counter-balance
elbows swinging above hips, legs in binary motions
and deep breathing in and out, elevated torso,
foot tips bending heels up his canvas shoes
no panting, the rustle of his shirt in passing you by.
His way, gracile, almost sweatless
Jasmine, lilac strewn in his path overtaking fragrance.
His chosen name already taken, Jude,
he would have set for Judas, but not allowed, overloaded,