Over the hill, maybe far away

Little brother
--hardly little,
but then hardly
anything more
than dust
and waterfalls--
you’re ten months
gone today.

Grief marks its
anniversaries
in reverent moments
like this, tolling
twelve times
the first year
it low leaden
and fading bell.

When the calendar
reaching 18 it’s
time to haul
the out the angelus
again, summing
the heart’s measure
without you in this world,
how sad and wrong
that is for we who
still miss you so.

A shrinking congregation,
to be sure—the world
presents so many more
worries and loves
and tangents off from your
death, calling us
out of your chapel
into the world’s hard
acre where we’re
plowed, relentlessly,
by the next day,
your man Obama in office
now dealing with
a recession so bad
I can’t help thinking
you got out when the
going was still good.

Plenty of troubles
to absorb one’s mind,
other deaths too—
like my friend Mike
from AA who died of
lung cancer over
the weekend at age 49.
I was there when
he showed up a AA
five years ago reeking
of bourboned defeat,
the portrait of surrender
at the threshold of doom.
His voice raspy,
his eyes jaundiced,
his hand shaking
as his reached for
his white chip.

I watched Mike sober
up and recover into
a good man at last,
talking after meetings
offering hope
and assurance
and a smile, just
as I had been offered
the same when I
was new. His life
got simpler as
he got better.
He quit his job as
an engineer and took
up the trade of
caring for living things—
running a landscaping
business—hiring
guys from the
Salvation Army,
giving them the first
rung up. He came
to be life’s champion,
simple and quiet
and always grateful
when he spoke in
meeting, living
the dream at last
of a serene
contentedness.

How else to die
if not out of
a happy heart’s
fullness? What
better message of
hope for the newcomer
than to die of cancer
singing, giving
the good word with
one’s last infected
breath?

Perhaps there is
comfort for me in
Mike’s story because
it parallels your own,
the jagged taking
afoot hurt No
become a settled
and giving Yes,
recovered from
one history to
found the greener
and serener one
taking heart-full
pictures of the world,
singing loud
in church and
savoring love at
last and in full
with of those you loved.

Yet like my friend
Mike there are visible
and invisible threads
which lamp this
morning’s bulb of grief,
one told story
and its hidden other,
the good life’s coin
with its flip side
of more perplexing
truths, whatever
you really felt
and thought between
days working for
the congresswoman
as a district aide
and nights serving
church and AA
and the weekends
on which you were
the boyfriend and lover
traveling interiors of
the wilderness of
Oregon and the heart.

Doubts and fears,
tremors from the seismic
breeches of the past,
spells and seizures,
fits of the wooly beast,
sour and surly appetites,
depressive glooms
fanning abyssal vapors
into the day—were all
those unspoken
realms the greater
half of your truth?

You carried a
deep anxiousness
and malaise as
you worked and
loved and played
guitar, sponsoring
newcomers and
taking those
pictures of heaven,
the crucified boy
writhing on a
dark cross just a
few leagues deeper
from the earnest
aging man of
outward appearances.

In the first months
after you died
I so wanted to know
how much you
truly walked in those
reeking depths
thinking that perhaps
your true nature
was there, kept
far from our
critical view.

Today I sigh and
wonder but not much
more than that—for
who doesn’t shoulder
all the burdens you
said were heavy?
Who doesn’t ferry
a bone-man on their
back through the night
of lonliness and absence,
crying Job-like cantos
of resentment at the moon?
Who doesn’t wish for
more and doesn’t dream
of satities no one
sates enough on,
the two-year-old
tyrant in his high
chair getting served
up his desire by
Mother and all
the familiars of
her nature—breasted
she-beast and
addict wolf, sugary
receipts to every
boozy depth?

Today I shrug a
and whisper
c’est la vie—
that’s life—meaning
no matter, we’re all
angelic imps, spiritual
creatures making
our way through
the strange realm of life,
attempting perfections
our mortal minds
and hearts can’t attain.

And besides, whatever
you truly were
was scattered along
with your hopes and
affirmations when
you breathed your
last at 3 a.m.
April 18 2008,
leaving behind
only dust, an
ebbing breeze
through the tall
trees in hills beyond
Salem where
your shadow still hikes.

Whatever mortal sum
you were at this
time last year it’s
gone, subsumed
in dark water which
seems deepest at
this hour of 5:01:22
which displays on
your laptop which
I now write on,
my fingers walking
with the ghost of yours
on the ramparts of a poem.

In a folder on this
laptop there are
seventeen takes
of a shoot dated
Feb. 17 2008,
all of a road which
summits a hill—
different angles
and lighting.
It seems you
were trying to
name a quality
with that image,
the road ahead
which crests in
mystery, who knows
what will be found
ahead, what will
suddenly arrive
from that mysterious
horizon. There’s
not much art to
the shots—more
an attempt to grab
a concept, perhaps
for a client,
perhaps for some
work you were
quietly about.

No way to know
your intent here, bro,
I have given all
hope of that up:
All I can do is share
what you saw
and say how much
those things still
excite and calm
the mind at once
while the heart
rows on in its
little boat of grief.

So pregnant
a rising road.
Did you know your
death was coming?
On that date you
would have been
recovering still
from that run in which
you felt something
puncture in your chest
and caused such
difficulty breathing.
The hill you photographed
seems high, human
but insurmountable,
perhaps the way
you felt about
the time which
remained in your chest.

Perhaps you felt
compelled to name
that impending sense
with a photograph,
immanent in the dark
garage of fate which
drives out always
unexpectedly to catch
us where we stand,
like the Volkwagen
Beetle you thumbed
a ride in back in ‘81
or the hellbent
pickup which came
from behind and
slammed into that
bug, sending you
so close to your first death ..

I sat out at 4 a.m.
this morning on the
front stoop of our
house feeding
Mamacita, the
night gone cold again,
the garden looking
stumpy—I’d lopped
back all of the
Mexican petunias
on Saturday for
the next year’s
green growth—and
everything so very
hushed and still,
devoid almost of pulse,

the closest I get
to you these days.
I thought of my
friend Mike now
on your side, beyond
the end of the
hill where Ninth
Avenue crosses
Grandview and
disappears into
your smile.

I pet Mamacita
as she eats, such
plush blueblack fur,
always glad to
see her once again,
never sure she’ll
be back—coyotes
in the neighborhood,
a heart of your sort
ticking in my chest
(how much is
the question only
God and fate know),
you know, the
usual arras of fears
which row beneath
the surface of the day,
singing softly beneath
the moon a song
you know quite well
and are, I guess,
much as we will ever know.

You’re close to
me right then,
standing up at
the top of the hill,
coming home or
forever leaving
I can’t tell,
ever. I’d join you
but Belle waits inside
for me, curled on
the seat of my writing
chair, ready for
love and attention,
pets, devotion,
the full pour of
my heart she
bells back with
her own love.

My wife’s upstairs
asleep mending her
way to the next day
full of hope and
ambition for her
bedding business,
that fragile beautiful
trade of soft dreams.

And I have this
poem to write to you,
which is all I can do
on this ten-month’s
bell-toll of passing,
another round of moon gone,
another song for Timm
sent out on the night’s tide
bearing this frail candle
of love. Yes, time
to go in and post
this letter on your
memorial wall
next to the other
songs fading to dust.
Mamacita finished
her bowl and troops
off into the night,
black tail swishing
into dark weeds,
gone.