And Yet Another Forgotten Poem

 Your Mouth A Cave

 

 

I fell and fell and fell

for one year, black

the bouldered walls 

the circle of stone

in that one episode

you know the one

where the British detective

is always too late to prevent

the second murder, the body

in the well.

                        The first

murder is without metaphor.

 

But I was falling down that

well, that cave, it’s stony

circle glittering with stars

green cities drowning in

the half-green moon below.

 

I kept it’s image on my phone.

 

In midst of two thousand

shots of friends and flowers

and dogs, our dogs, and San

Francisco, New York, Seattle,

 

there in the middle of things,

in medias res, is your

 

dead face, mouth agape.

 

For one year I kept

that image with me near

that other one of our dead dog

remembering that curly hair

against my face

after the death chemical

coursed through her.

 

Birdy about to receive the needle.

Another Forgotten Poem

Miró's Femme et Oiseau dans la Nuit, 1947,

In España

 

 

Our first time in Europe

Miro was everywhere in Madrid.

 

Oh Ghost, do you remember?

The gallery, the museum, the

 

posters on the busses, how the

wild squiggles and balls commanded

 

walls around the city. How

we found the little restaurant

 

Rick Steves recommended,

before he was Ricksteves.com,

 

there beside the railroad bridge

that bore a Miro-like graffito.

 

How the tiny fried fish were

so delicious, bones and all.

 

And now you’re in the earth,

bones and all, but not this

 

presence. This unpredictable

presence. How like you it is.

 

How like this strange and beautiful

symbology of black, white, blue,

and red, the spiders and sperm,

the bodiless hands, and sweet

notes the memory of you

arising like a Miro unrolling

on an early, pre-intel laptop screen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

kakehuck (c) 2023 

 

 

Back at The Haven

 After letting a couple thousand dollars of unused time slip away from me I am finally back at the Haven, looking out the window at the boarders on the river.  It would be fun to be out there if I had someone to go with.  Someday.  

I've decided to start coming in at 3 pm for a beer and some time at the computer.  Mid-afternoon and early evening is a lousy time to be at home or with the dogs anyway. So Sequel and Winston are inside.   I don't know where Miss Poppy is but she'll show up when I go back home.

Dear Will:

I thought of you last week when I spent $7 on a handful of apricots. I remembered the fourth Salt Lake residence, the polygamous house, with the giant ancient apricot tree in the neighbors' yard.  I remembered getting up on the roof and bagging pounds and pounds of cots. You made jam that we froze and ate the rest of the year.

Missing you,

Love, Kake

As I review the writing I'm going to be putting together at The Haven this month, I ran into this poem, written since Will died but I don't know when.

WILL AND HIS GRACE

(c) kake huck 2023

You were happy
when that poem about 
us fucking on the side
of an almost empty highway
in the middle of Nevada
made it into an anthology

but not so joyful
when I performed
my money-making,
award winning
poem about the woman
artist I delighted in
New Mexico ...
it displayed my naked
pirate heart.

Nevertheless, when
I asked how you managed
living with those poems
with those confessions,
(by which I meant, of course,
with me)

you said, with your gangly,
earthy, angelic grace, "It's
just a life in the arts, I guess."

And put your arm around
my shoulders.

 

So this is a thing . . .

 I wrote this last Sunday

Watching digitized 1992 Will

On Friday I was in the bedroom and asked Alexa to play OPB on TuneIn while I was changing clothes. I hated the news as soon as it came on so said, "Alexa Stop!" and she did.  Then I asked her to play a particular song from Amazon music ...  Statler Bros., maybe.  I finished dressing before the song was over and asked her to turn off.  She did.  Then as I was leaving the room she popped back on playing something.  I told her, "Alexa stop" and she didn't.  I told her again.  She didn't.  So I stood there listening to the words, "Hard times come again no more ..."  The piece, by some camerata, ended and an announcer came on and said that the song was from Ken Burns Civil War. When I told Alexa to stop once more, she did.

Will loved this song.  He loved Americana and played the Ken Burns' Civil War soundtrack often for a few years after we watched it.  I know he would not like or does not like how sad I remain. Perhaps this technical difficulty was him speaking to me once more. That's how I felt when I heard it.

 

 

Moving In Mind

 Dear Will:

We didn’t move in 2014 because you had developed dementia and it would have further damaged you.

I haven’t had the energy to move since you died. I may never have the energy, as much as I dislike Bend and don’t like to think about dying there.  So I’ve been on a trip looking at the valley, thinking about whether or not I want to move over here. I made half assed preparations for this trip and have had a bit of a half-assed time, but I for sure figured out that I don’t want to move to Corvallis.

Three Ladies from The Magic Flute

Right now I’m sitting in the Magic Flute room at McMenamins Grand Lodge. Since this Hotel is constructed in the reframed old people’s Masonic Grand Lodge, it’s very appropriate to have Mozart playing 24/7 in this room.  It may even be the opera itself.  At this moment in time it IS the overture playing.

My grief is much more manageable, though I’ve been crying at odd times. When I dropped in on Steve and Kate I cried on the way up their gravel driveway because you were with me the last time I saw them.

I still get frustrated too quickly and get angry and irritated when things don’t go my way.  I need to work harder on chilling out.

Love you always,

Kake

Visiting Marion

 Dear Will --

Our friend Marion is sure that she's going to be visiting spirits with our friend Lorna soon.  Lorna is for sure dying and Marion feels it as her Parkinsons is getting more difficult to manage.

On Sunday I brought a collections of pictures of you to share with her.  It was good talking about you with the only other person here who really knew you, at least as far as it was possible to know the Cat Who Walked By Himself (and all people and places were alike to him.) 

I still miss you every day but the grief is lighter, softer, and not quite so physical.

Love, 

Kake 

 

 

A Toddlin' Town!

 Dear Will --

from abc news

The new Pope was born in Chicago the same year you were going to school there!  Ish.  Within a year. (I forget your exact years - just remember you got to Poky in 1957.)  He's just two years younger than I.  He's spent most of his life outside of the US, most of it in Peru.

Anyway, that's pretty interesting to me, the pope born in Chicago.  I know you had in life a bit of a bias against "popery". 

I hope he keeps the late Francis' commitment to social justice and love.

I must admit I love the drama and pageantry of the catholic tradition.  I also love the postmodern touch of bishops wearing their long, black cassocks in the courtyards, looking at their phones. I had my eyes on the live feed during the book club discussion this morning.

I've been listening to a book called Let Them -- recommended to me by two folks at church.  It doesn't tell me anything I didn't already know but that I have forgotten during dementia-care and widowhood. It's a mix of stoicism, zen, and pop psychology.  The author tells a story early on that convict me -- about getting upset at friends not connecting with her and being driven crazy by seeing social media posts of a friend group on a trip "without me."  At the time she was very sad.  But later, when she wrote the book, after applying what she calls the "let them theory," she sees the role she plays in her own unhappiness.  The greatest unhappiness comes from wanting life to be different than it is.  The Buddha would say suffering is a result of desire.  End desire, especially the desire for things to be different than they are, and you end unhappiness.  That's the concept, anyway.  And the book is all about that  -- letting people do and be who they are.  I knew all this when I taught and I was very able to be quite detached from what students thought of me.

Your decline and death, however, kind of broke my ability to manage my emotions, even though I taught for 30 years about managing emotions.  Sigh.

But things are getting better.  The book is a good reminder for me.  And I'm getting more skilled at getting along in the world without needing to control everything around me. 

The book is helpful with new-to-me info on adult friendships -- which I really didn't think much about until I retired. And then I let my focus first on my "new work" - as a celebrant - and then my focus on you captured my limited ability to hang with people. Also it's what every fucking therapist has told me - that I need to "rescue myself" (with God's help, I always add).

You've told me through mediums to choose to be happy.  It's been hard until recently.  I still miss you. I still grieve.  But I'm also getting better at being happy around other people.

As long as there aren't too many of them all at once.

Love,

Kake