No. 32: Untitled (for Art)

Dear Friends,

My friend Art passed away a few weeks ago. Somehow, amidst the eddy of sadness and grief and the steady march of daily life and routine obligations, a poem emerged. Here it is, and that is all.

Untitled (for Art)

When that cold sun breaks the sky like a hammer
strikes porcelain, one thousand shivers
of blue and white arrayed above and
whispers bending between sunbeams,
I am tearing through the ice and granite valley
squinting at the speed of this unearthly
machine, shaking no no no at how quickly
you were split from the earth, a flake
of schist thrown into the sediment of seas.
My eyes blink tears, oscillating
in time to the alternating
rhyme of tap tap tap fingers
on the wheel, on the temple
because I consider the distance
one must travel in a life,
from back there
and then, through
here and now
– soon gone –
and beyond.
Why can’t we be
geological time
too?

And that is all,

Jeremy

Art was a passionate geologist. I first met him at a weekend camping trip at Kettle Pond in Vermont, where he led a walking geological tour. He taught me about how the landscape in this part of Vermont formed and changed over millennia, and what makes a kettle pond a kettle pond. He animated the mountains, boulders, and sediment, awakening that which seems so immovable and permanent.