EARTH ROOTS

Kristy and Jack

Today is your birthday, and I would rather remember your birth than your death.  I know your family and friends are all thinking of you today Kristy.  This last year was another milestone - and you would have been 33 today.  Who knows what you would have accomplished?  Each time I look at your photo I feel as if I am looking into myself.  It's as if I am holding all my memories of you in one hand and there is so much love. One thing is certain - no one who knew you will ever forget you.  You are connected to us all.


What are Earth Roots, my daughter asked
when she was just a child,
examining each flower in its home.


Earth Roots are a special connection,
a sacred thread that joins our spirits
to every living thing, I said.  Earth Roots
Join me to you, and you to birds and flowers.


In her hand my daughter held a sparrow
with a broken wing.  She said:
Can Earth Roots make the sparrow fly again?


The sparrow can become a rose, in time,
just as the rose takes wing, I said.
Earth Roots make all things possible.


My daughter did not understand these things
until she had a daughter of her own.
Then she saw the way Earth Roots join
The sparrow to the rose.


-  Earth Roots, by Nancy Wood

P.S.  Jack sends you his love.  He misses you.

THE TEMPLE

Your body is the place of every memory,

A privileged place, the junction of Matter,

Energy, Spirit, and Conscience,

The entire universe is in your body,

your body is a Temple.

- Amazonian oral tradition

MY SINGING SATELLITE

This haunting song reminds me of Kristy each  time I hear it.  

I have changed a few of the words to make it personal. 

Hear the tune and watch the video.

My love is like footsteps in the snow, baby,
I follow you everywhere you go, baby.
The pain as light has come to wake you
And you forever realize
That you inspire the dreams that guide me baby.

You're a half a world away
But in my mind I whisper every single word you say.
And before I sleep at night
I pray to you, my lucky star, my singing satellite.

You follow the winds that bring the cold, baby,
You light a fire in my soul, baby.
The lightest touch of feathers falling
Your love may be invisible
But you inspire the dreams that guide me, baby

You're a half a world away
But in my mind I whisper every single word you say.
And before I sleep at night
I pray to you, my lucky star, my singing satellite. 

KEEPING SECRETS

I know what you mean

when you talk about the flashes

of strobes and rapid fire

blinding with feelings

you see... that day

I watched you from across the road

as I watched everyone else

while my soul took them all

searing bullet after bullet strobe

of images of chaos and confusion

my body she immobilized

for spending our time

was best a secret

the way she liked it I knew

and even now I try

to indulge her

but you know

that its too late for me

because with her

I already let myself loose

E.J.

RAGING AGAINST THE TAR

Photo and verse by Elliot

I like to suffer says the madman

as he walks out the door again

suffering is my home he says

when wild winds rage the sea

or pounding tar machines

race to hurl themselves at me

leave nothing i can see

except bitter sweetness

of life and memory.......

MY HEART REVOLVES

Almost out of the sky, half of the moon

anchors between two mountains.

Turning, wandering night, the digger of eyes.

Let's see how many stars are smashed in the pool.

It makes a cross of mourning between my eyes,

and runs away.

Forge of blue metals, nights of still combats,

my heart revolves like a crazy wheel.

Girl who have come from so far, been brought from so far,

sometimes your glance flashes out under the sky,

you cross above my heart without stopping.

Wind from the tombs carries off, wrecks, scatters your sleepy root.

The big trees on the other side of her, uprooted.

But you, cloudless girl, question of smoke, corn tassel.

You were what the wind was making with illuminated leaves.

Behind the nocturnal mountains, white lily of conflagration,

ah, I can say nothing! You were made of everything.

Longing that sliced my breast into pieces,

it is time to take another road, on which she does not smile.

Storm that buried the bells, muddy swirl of torments,

why touch her now, why make her sad.

Oh to follow the road that leads away from everything,

without anguish, death, winter waiting along it

with their eyes open through the dew.

Almost Out of the Sky by Pablo Neruda

SLEEPING IN YOUR SOUL

YOUR BREAST IS ENOUGH

Your breast is enough for my heart,

and my wings for your freedom.

What was sleeping above your soul will rise

out of my mouth to heaven.

In you is the illusion of each day.

You arrive like the dew to the cupped flowers.

You undermine the horizon with your absence.

Eternally in flight like the wave.

I have said that you sang in the wind

like the pines and like the masts.

Like them you are tall and taciturn,

and you are sad, all at once, like a voyage.

You gather things to you like an old road.

You are peopled with echoes and nostalgic voices.

I awoke and at times birds fled and migrated

that had been sleeping in your soul.

--Pablo Neruda

You are with me today as always.

GIRL LITHE AND TAWNY

Girl lithe and tawny, the sun that forms
the fruits, that plumps the grains, that curls seaweeds
filled your body with joy, and your luminous eyes
and your mouth that was the smile of the water.

A black yearning sun is braided into the strands
of your black name, when you stretch your arms.
You play with the sun as with a little brook
and it leaves two dark pools in your eyes.

Girl lithe and tawny, nothing draws me towards you.
Everything bears me farther away, as though you were noon.
You are the frenzied youth of the bee,
the drunkenness of the wave, the power of the wheat-ear.

My somber heart searches for you, nevertheless,
and I love your joyful body, your slender and flowing voice.
Dark butterfly, sweet and definitive
like the wheat-field and the sun, the poppy and the water.

Pablo Neruda

AS YOU WERE

Images of Kristy and me at an Ironman Race together

I REMEMBER YOU AS YOU WERE

by Pablo Neruda

I remember you as you were in the last autumn.

You were the gray beret and the still heart.

In your eyes the flames of the twilight fought on.

And the leaves fell in the water of your soul.

Clasping my arms like a climbing plant

the leaves garnered your voice, that was slow and at peace.

Bonfire of awe in which my thirst was burning.

Sweet blue hyacinth twisted over my soul.

I feel your eyes traveling, and the autumn is far off:

gray beret, voice of a bird, heart like a house

towards which my deep longings migrated

and my kisses fell, happy as embers.

Sky from a ship. Field from the hills:

Your memory is made of light, of smoke, of a still pond!

Beyond your eyes, farther on, the evenings were blazing.

Dry autumn leaves revolved in your soul.

Your face is my sky and I sip at your memory. Your eyes are everywhere. ----Mom

WHAT IS DEATH?

Kristy and Laurissa all dressed up

This is a comforting poem. I would like to get to this place. But of course it was written by someone who was still alive. How do we really know what death is? Do some people really have an extra sense? I think Kristy's sister Laurissa may. She is convinced she will be with Kristy again. But it still does not keep us from missing her and what was.

What is Death?
Death is nothing at all.
I have only slipped away into the next room.
I am I and you are you.
Whatever we were to each other,
that we still are.

Call me by my old familiar name.
Speak to me in the easy way
which you always used.
Put no difference in your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.

Laugh as we always laughed
at the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word
that it always was.
Let it be spoken without affect,
without the trace of a shadow on it.

Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same that it ever was.
There is absolutely unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind
because I am out of sight?

I am waiting for you,
for an interval,
somewhere very near,
just around the corner.

All is well.
~ Henry Scott Holland

TOUCHED

Kristy and Tanya ride together in New Zealand

Kristy sent me this poem. When I read it now it is of course about her. There are many others in this world who have been touched by Kristy. Our lives will never be the same.

People will forget what you said,
People will forget what you did,
But people will never forget
how you made them feel

- Maya Angelou

INDESTRUCTIBLE

Sometime earlier I wrote about how death is seen differently by a mother who has put a child in the ground. I remember also saying I felt "indestructible". When I thought back on this statement I felt it was a little strange and could not quite articulate why I felt this way. When talking about Kristy at her memorial I suddenly just blurted it out. I did not intend to say it. I think this poem explains it better than I...

You have made me indestructible

because with you

I do not end in myself.

Pablo Neruda

POETRY IS

Poetry is memory bathed in tears.

      Miguel Angel Asturias

DIFFERENT LEVELS

Perhaps reality and unreality
do not exist.
Perhaps it is only a question
of different levels of reality,
some which we do not perceive.
Or of different levels of unreality,
of which we perceive only a few.
Or of different levels
of some unique thing,
which sometimes we see
and sometimes we don't.
-Roberto Juarroz

Elliot  - Thank you for being the unique thing you are and for showing it to me.  

VIOLINS AND CELLOS

There is a time of evening 

when the prairie is about to say something.

It never says it.

Or perhaps it is constantly saying it 

but we never hear it,

or we hear it, 

but it is as inexpressible 

as a piece of music.

- Jorge Luis Borges

This feeling happens to me when I least expect it. And I am filled with love and longing for you. I grasp for a fleeting glimpse of you and if I am lucky I do hear the music. It always comes with violins and cellos. Sweet and clear, with all the longing of a heart so young and strong. The beauty and strength of you will never leave me. I look forward to the next time I am under your spell.

A SERIES OF BEATS

Clas and Kristy celebrate

Time is no longer succession

and becomes what it originally was and is:

the present, 

in which past and future are reconciled.

-Octavio Paz

The one consolation to grief is it's tie to the future and the present. Facing current and future loss helps me to view them as the same. They are but one part of the same face. If I can get through today then I can get through tomorrow. If I can at some point accept today then I can at some point accept tomorrow. If I see my heart as a series of beats and not as a lifeless organ I drag around with me - I can project the possibility of change. If I think about laying down my pain in the future it gives me hope.  

NO PITY

Yet my slings are whirling.

I am here,

I scream,

desire.

My strength and my pain,

in the night.

I want it.

My strength is my pain,

in the night.

I want it.

I must open this door.

And go through it.

I must defeat it.

My stones must reach their target.

I scream.

Cry.

Desire.

--Pablo Neruda

Was he speaking about grief and sorrow?  The sorrow that feeds upon itself and rewards the weary heart with renewed determination, like a sadistic cannibal licking it's lips.  A sorrow oozing desperate desire.  The scar that never heals as it is tended and cared for only to break open each night. Each new stone seeks its mark.  

Like a raging river, 

like an endless fountain, 

like an echo singing it's loss 

over and over.  

What is on the other side?  

I dream the journey each night

but my desire shows no pity.

MEASURELESS

We return through the body to the beginning,

spiral off stillness and motion.

Taste, moral knowledge, finite pause,

has beginning and end -- and is measureless.

-Octavio Paz

Why does this make me cry?

WHILE WE SLEEP

While we sleep here,
elsewhere we are awake.
Thus each person is two people.

Jorge Luis Borges

One of Kristy's favorite authors was Paulo Coelho.  I once asked Kristy if she had a book I could read while traveling to see my sister Kim.  She picked out the book, "Eleven Minutes" and gave it to me as a present.  The girl in the book, Maria, says of herself that she is not a "body with a soul, but a soul with a body."  Even though we are essentially both I think sometimes they seem to get mixed up.  The line gets blurred.  When something extraordinary in our lives happens, whether it is good or bad, our world can shift.  We can change "bodies".

There seems to be no way to survive the sorrow of death, except to escape to that other part of oneself called the soul.  But this is a curious paradox because to gain entrance to the soul I have found it takes a great deal of the body to accomplish.  When I have been running long enough I feel as if I am able to distract my body to the point that I am allowed entrance into this other part of myself.  The part of me that is awake.  The part of me that can still see what my body no longer can.

It is inside this part of me where Kristy now resides.  

SMALL WHITE ROCK

The garden Kristy and I tended

yesterday I threw
a rock into the garden…

that a woman once gave to me
small and white… it was of the sea
like she appeared from nowhere
in need of release
in an ear or in a shoulder

yet so did I
such relief desire

stories of our alive
such pleasures and decadence
yet such torment
incomprehensible brutality
in undeniable beauty

and all at once
and all the way
our souls laid bare

yesterday I threw
a rock into the garden….

but that was ten thousand years ago

-- Elliot