Fred
Fred
His brains were still on the walls, mixed with blood
And broken scrimshaw of shot-gunned bone.
Fred died before Spring’s lady slippers bloomed,
Before the phlox and columbine poured out
Their colors over the hardscrabble’s edge.
His blood ran red into next year’s bloodroot.
For him the equinox brought only night,
And he was gathered to time’s reliquary,
Where his soul mingled with the sprawling hardwoods,
And fell to dust among old, fallen leaves.
How beautiful was she, Fred, when, with shears
In hand, the lady of this country snipped
Some of your hair and dropped it into currents
Of clear uncertainty? There was a splash,
A turbulence of shaken light, a swirl
Of droplets fluttering, from which the king
Of birds, with his swift retinue, rose up,
And flew out of the cave, across the river,
And into the broad greenwood at its edge,
The leaflined hem between the moon and sun.
Fred, when I have returned from this frontier
Encapsulating memory and loss,
And have reentered, for a little while,
The spectrum of the living, I will listen
For sweet, remembered songs of wren and cricket,
And in the Spring-time air the singing boughs
And the thin, broken mortar, alive with chirping,
Will call to me with the light, trilling notes
Of your old-time laughter. You will live
By day and night, by sunlight and starlight,
While I, with joints and spine exfoliating,
Will age in song, until we meet again,
Moistened with waters of black Styx and green
Aspergilla of flower-scented myrtle.
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the lady of this country snipped: according to one version of the entry of the dead into Hades, Persephone, as a sort of post mortem initiation, cut a little of the shade's hair.
the king
Of birds, with his swift retinue: the wren wren defeated the eagle in a contest for the title of King of Birds. The title was to be awarded to the highest flying bird. The eagle was the favorite, but the tiny wren hid on the eagles body, and when the great raptor had reached the top of his range, the lowly wren leaped into the air and soared higher, thus winning the title King of Birds.
T.S. Eliot said “Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.”
This is genuine poetry. I liked it the first time I read it. I’ve liked it better every time I’ve read it since. The hatred of death, the stirring in your chest at the remembering of a loved one, the slow return to the feeling alive yourself.
All things I’ve felt, but you put them to words in a way closer to how I’ve felt them than I ever could.
And you’ve shared something of yourself, your past.
I’m sad for Fred. I’m sad for you.
This is fantastic genuine poetry.
I find this a strangely joyful poem, in which the sheer beauty of nature tends to predominate.