55 — for Bobbb

Photo of his beloved Bandingo Farm by Robert Butkereit

September 2, 2012

In stillness now,
the beloved farm manifests the
lovely seasons of observation
and reverence that he

       Soft summer is still soft,
       but lonely for the reflections
       written and photographed
       that only he

              The bear snores in the woods,
              blossoms are full and lazy, birds
              ready for migration in autumn,
              and he

will be remembered here.

~~~

My post written in exactly 55 words for Flash Fiction 55, now hosted by the lovelies over at imaginary garden with read toads.

Sorrowfully, this poem is not fiction and is written to honor a friend and fellow blogger who died suddenly this week, alone, on his farm in a remote part of New York.

Known as Citizen of Earth and also as Bobbb, Robert Butkereit authored one of the best blogs out there and I can hardly believe how few followers he had. Robert and I became friends via our blogs, a friendship that extended to Facebook, which is where I learned of his death. Please do yourself a favor and visit his blog, Zenspace to read some, or many, of his deep posts.

I have chosen to reprint his post from February 10, 2014. The photo and writing are pure Citizen of Earth.
RIP, dear friend.

In Passing

This long road I never expected to see
Past the vanishing point milestone markers melt slowly
A billion billion drops of rain never counted and the wind
Working overtime to the same conclusion
The silent stars stand witness
They alone hold the key
For the road begins and ends by their good grace
Time and space
And the secrets they share
Be they particle
Or wave

And more than peace the passage of her days. . .

For Bruce as he mourns the death of Victoria, his first love ~



A Ballad of Death by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Kneel down, fair Love, and fill thyself with tears,
Girdle thyself with sighing for a girth
Upon the sides of mirth,
Cover thy lips and eyelids, let thine ears
Be filled with rumour of people sorrowing;
Make thee soft raiment out of woven sighs
Upon the flesh to cleave,
Set pains therein and many a grievous thing,
And many sorrows after each his wise
For armlet and for gorget and for sleeve.

O Love's lute heard about the lands of death,
Left hanged upon the trees that were therein;
O Love and Time and Sin,
Three singing mouths that mourn now underbreath,
Three lovers, each one evil spoken of;
O smitten lips wherethrough this voice of mine
Came softer with her praise;
Abide a little for our lady's love.
The kisses of her mouth were more than wine,
And more than peace the passage of her days.

O Love, thou knowest if she were good to see.
O Time, thou shalt not find in any land
Till, cast out of thine hand,
The sunlight and the moonlight fail from thee,
Another woman fashioned like as this.
O Sin, thou knowest that all thy shame in her
Was made a goodly thing;
Yea, she caught Shame and shamed him with her kiss,
With her fair kiss, and lips much lovelier
Than lips of amorous roses in late spring.

By night there stood over against my bed
Queen Venus with a hood striped gold and black,
Both sides drawn fully back
From brows wherein the sad blood failed of red,
And temples drained of purple and full of death.
Her curled hair had the wave of sea-water
And the sea's gold in it.
Her eyes were as a dove's that sickeneth.
Strewn dust of gold she had shed over her,
And pearl and purple and amber on her feet.

Upon her raiment of dyed sendaline
Were painted all the secret ways of love
And covered things thereof,
That hold delight as grape-flowers hold their wine;
Red mouths of maidens and red feet of doves,
And brides that kept within the bride-chamber
Their garment of soft shame,
And weeping faces of the wearied loves
That swoon in sleep and awake wearier,
With heat of lips and hair shed out like flame.

The tears that through her eyelids fell on me
Made mine own bitter where they ran between
As blood had fallen therein,
She saying; Arise, lift up thine eyes and see
If any glad thing be or any good
Now the best thing is taken forth of us;
Even she to whom all praise
Was as one flower in a great multitude,
One glorious flower of many and glorious,
One day found gracious among many days:

Even she whose handmaiden was Love--to whom
At kissing times across her stateliest bed
Kings bowed themselves and shed
Pale wine, and honey with the honeycomb,
And spikenard bruised for a burnt-offering;
Even she between whose lips the kiss became
As fire and frankincense;
Whose hair was as gold raiment on a king,
Whose eyes were as the morning purged with flame,
Whose eyelids as sweet savour issuing thence.

Then I beheld, and lo on the other side
My lady's likeness crowned and robed and dead.
Sweet still, but now not red,
Was the shut mouth whereby men lived and died.
And sweet, but emptied of the blood's blue shade,
The great curled eyelids that withheld her eyes.
And sweet, but like spoilt gold,
The weight of colour in her tresses weighed.
And sweet, but as a vesture with new dyes,
The body that was clothed with love of old.

Ah! that my tears filled all her woven hair
And all the hollow bosom of her gown--
Ah! that my tears ran down
Even to the place where many kisses were,
Even where her parted breast-flowers have place,
Even where they are cloven apart--who knows not this?
Ah! the flowers cleave apart
And their sweet fills the tender interspace;
Ah! the leaves grown thereof were things to kiss
Ere their fine gold was tarnished at the heart.

Ah! in the days when God did good to me,
Each part about her was a righteous thing;
Her mouth an almsgiving,
The glory of her garments charity,
The beauty of her bosom a good deed,
In the good days when God kept sight of us;
Love lay upon her eyes,
And on that hair whereof the world takes heed;
And all her body was more virtuous
Than souls of women fashioned otherwise.

Now, ballad, gather poppies in thine hands
And sheaves of brier and many rusted sheaves
Rain-rotten in rank lands,
Waste marigold and late unhappy leaves
And grass that fades ere any of it be mown;
And when thy bosom is filled full thereof
Seek out Death's face ere the light altereth,
And say "My master that was thrall to Love
Is become thrall to Death."
Bow down before him, ballad, sigh and groan.
But make no sojourn in thy outgoing;
For haply it may be
That when thy feet return at evening
Death shall come in with thee.

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we shared a similar fragmentation of ourselves

Dancer Before the Light by Foto_By_Messina

I am Paris, and I am a string of beads on a hot dancer.

~quote from this scene in Julia (1977)

The movie Julia, starring Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave, is close to my heart for giving me courage a long time ago. Looking back on it now it seems as if I'm recalling an episode from someone else's life and not my own, a feeling most of us have probably had at one time or another. Only in this particular case it is true, for when I remember back to that time I truly am recalling an episode from someone else's past - as well as from my own. Because she and I shared a similar fragmentation of ourselves brought on by similar catalysts and it was that falling apart that brought us together briefly in order for us each to help the other hold on, just hold on until such time that moving on was possible.

We each had husbands attending law school in Salem, Oregon, but we hadn't met because the guys hadn't much in common (other than the obvious) and were not friends. She was a young professional with a job in town and I was a licensed insurance agent. I worked for a company whose sales and service were mainly done over the phone, but occasionally "insureds" (the jargon for customers) would come to the office. One day a young man came to my desk for assistance in splitting his insurance policy into two separate policies. He was leaving his wife. When I learned that he was a law student I asked him if he knew my husband.....yes, he did -- and did he know that my husband had left me two weeks earlier.....no, he wasn't aware of that (good, I thought, my plight and my shame are not known all over the law school). Splitting off the policies was a bit time-consuming, full of necessary details, and I needed the serial number of his wife's vehicle. When he said he'd call me with it the next day I offered to call his wife for the information, which was fine with him.

Her name was Beth and she was very formal at the beginning of my call. I told her in the first minutes that we shared something in common and she seemed as stunned as I was to be in the predicaments we were in (who knew this could ever happen?), and stunned also that there was someone else who knew this could ever happen. We exchanged home phone numbers so that we could each get back to work and then talked that evening.

Julia was just out in the theaters, not yet even in Salem but was playing in Portland. It was Beth's suggestion that we go and getting the hell out of Salem sounded great to me (she had a car, I did not), although I didn't know anything about the movie. She said she'd give me background on the way to Portland. Beth had graduated from a prestigious all-women college, I hadn't (yet) graduated from college, and her conversation very much reflected education and travel. I had never heard of Lillian Hellman until that afternoon when Beth explained that she wrote Pentimento, the book that included Julia. By the time we arrived at the theater my excitement to get away from all my problems was replaced by excitement for the film, a film I loved that night in 1977 and still consider one of my favorites.

In many ways there was a kind of parallel between the women in the movie and Beth and me. Beth was going to be OK in spite of her heartbreak, that was clear, because she had a financial support system back home that provided a psychic armor that I simply did not have. She knew who she was and what she wanted in life and in no way was she going to fail in her career or in the eyes of her family and friends. I hadn't a clue who I was or what I wanted in life, I hated my job and office work, and failing seemed, if not inevitable to me, an adventure at least. Beth talked about everything, including her hurt and anger, in a lovely open manner. I hadn't processed my hurt and anger, which choked my capacity for conversation altogether. Beth sipped wine, two glasses max.
I was hell-bent on finding oblivion.

We shared a couple more dinners together but were going in different directions. Beth tried harder than I did to build a friendship between us. I just remembered something! She bought a book for me that I'd forgotten about. Changing by Liv Ullmann was so meaningful because both Beth and I were avid viewers of the PBS series, Scenes from a Marriage that starred Liv Ulllmann and rerun that season... oh the irony. I don't know what happened to my copy of that marvelous autobiography, but I lost it through the years and after recalling these memories I long to read it again.

I may also try to find Beth on Facebook. I owe her some thank yous for being there when my life was changing.


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In Memorium: Tommy.......be ready, heart, for parting

Stages

~by Hermann Hesse

As every flower fades and as all youth

Departs, so life at every stage,

So every virtue, so our grasp of truth,

Blooms in its day and may not last forever.

Since life may summon us at every age

Be ready, heart, for parting, new endeavor,

Be ready bravely and without remorse

To find new light that old ties cannot give.

In all beginnings dwells a magic force

For guarding us and helping us to live.

Serenely let us move to distant places

And let no sentiments of home detain us.

The Cosmic Spirit seeks not to restrain us

But lifts us stage by stage to wider spaces.

If we accept a home of our own making,

Familiar habit makes for indolence.

We must prepare for parting and leave-taking

Or else remain the slaves of permanence.

Even the hour of our death may send

Us speeding on to fresh and newer spaces,

And life may summon us to newer races.

So be it, heart: bid farewell without end.

Tommy died on May 5, the day I posted my shots of a double rainbow. I have been in a place of inner silence since learning on May 13 that he is gone.

He was the boy I wrote about having fought over with a girl on the schoolyard in third grade. Later that year he was injured during recess and fled into the school bleeding (was he crying? I don't think so). I loved him so that I followed him and, seeing drops of his blood in a trail along the hallway, I yanked paper towels from the girls bathroom and began wiping up his blood from the old-growth hardwood floor. A teacher, looking quite puzzled and repulsed, demanded that I stop.

We were friends for so long. The summer after graduating high school we had our first and only date. It was a drive up to Lake Tahoe and we may have had a meal.....I don't remember. What I do remember is holding his hand as he drove and talking about who we each had become since grammar school. I think we each had that 18-year-old sensation that time was passing quickly now and we felt a need to tidy up loose ends, make sense of youth, take the day to dream of our futures. The friend vibe between us, so firmly established, precluded romance from blooming. As I paused to think about that last sentence my eyes filled with tears because there are no regrets--only gratitude--that we trusted in the beauty of our friendship. 

The photo here is us at our 20th high school reunion, twenty years ago. His wife took the shot with their young ones nearby. She and I exchanged Christmas cards for some years afterward, but in the days before email and online social networking it was easy to simply drift apart from friends. We never thought it was farewell.......until it suddenly was.

National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-TALK (8255)

selected translation of Hesse poem from this site

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