Monday, January 18, 2010

LAST WORDS

"The poems walked through my day with me, around the house,watering the plants, feeding the cows, seeing my life." Words from an admirer in a letter to Mae Sarton. Of her fan mail Mae wrote, "All are precious, each in a different way. But all distract the mind and make it hard to concentrate. To create." And this is true. No matter how we love it, our mail does require an effort to respond to the specifics of each.
Mae was on a diet and had lost 4 pounds. She spent a lot of time wishing for brownies. "Never mind! In 6 weeks I shall fly up the stairs as light as air, so it is worth the deprivation." I hope this encourages all of us sedentary writers.
Emily Dickenson writes, "Dying is a wild night and a new road." I do remember how horrible it was to watch the world go by while I was plunged into the deepest grief I've ever known. How can it be? I wondered, that some people are still smiling and having fun when all I could do was weep. But it was a new road and I learned to walk it. Mitch Walking Elk sang, "This ain't no easy thing." We had entered a new country.
Before leaving Crosby I stood looking out over Cuyuna Lake. A rabbit was nibbling twigs in the brush and 2 squirrels were playing in the trees.
MLK JR DAY. Julian Bond, "...we do not honor the critic of capitalism, or the pacifist who declared all wars evil, or the man of God who argued that a nation that chose guns over butter would starve its people and kill itself. We honor an antiseptic hero." The Good Samaritan is the one who helps those who need help. When MLK JR was shot on April 4, 1968 he may have been singing, "Precious Lord Take my Hand".
Witness' tell us Brandon's last words, spoken minutes before he was shot to death, were for Lamaya. He had named her before she was born. I was asleep at Ball Club when I was awakened by a loud explosion. I hurried to the window expecting to see two cars smashed together. The night was dark and quiet. I believe I heard the shot that killed him. I think that he did not.

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