I know only two things about my friend’s most attentive, best lover: his name, and the wistful urgency in my friend’s nostalgia, the way her eyes grew wide and sparkled at the chance to say his name out loud, to call up memories of her time with him, more than two decades ago.
I forget that the reason to go somewhere is not because I know what the event will be like, not because I know in advance the kind of conversation I’ll have with friends. The reason to drag my sometimes depleted self out into the world is because that’s the only place to find angels with whom I can sing and dance.
Posted in Angels, Death/Loss/Grief, Isolation/Belonging, Religion, The Arts | 1 Comment »
Hang out with poets, and you never know what might happen.
Continue Reading »
Posted in Country Music, Death/Loss/Grief, Music, Poetry | Leave a Comment »
Twenty two years after his death,
I sit on the weather-stripped bench.
At my feet a small plaque commemorates a man I never met,
whose family and friends chose to mark his life.
To mark his death, really, as that’s the only year engraved.
Chose for strangers who never knew he existed
to know
that once there was a man named John Butler,
who must have sat just about here
gazing out across the water
seeing much the same view I’m seeing.
The View We Share
Posted in Art, Beaches/Tides, Death/Loss/Grief, Existential, Ocean, Poetry | Leave a Comment »