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To
the Community
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Bluffton: 2 March 2007
Susan Carpenter
The last day before spring break, and there was time in the morning to do
nothing but drink coffee and watch the sun climb up, liquid gold blobs through
bare branches, toward the sky which promised to be blue. March had begun; the
snow was gone except for a few piles of dirty ice. The creek ran full of
caramel-brown water.
Near the library I met Kathy Dickson – we’re celebrating women’s
voices at a reception on the thirteenth, I said; would you read a few of your
poems?
She smiled, pleased to be invited. Oh, Susan, I guess you didn’t know.
The edges of her eyes blurred as she held up the sign: classes cancelled. Prayer
gathering in Founders. 10:00.
One minute ago the day had been carefully scheduled. Now: a blank.
On the third floor of Centennial, Megan, with wet-clotted eyes, talked
with Lynda, who’d started class at 8:00 am, knew something was wrong,
couldn’t figure it out until a student told her. Megan searched the internet
and found a photo of the bus lying on its side with its windows smashed. Lynda
searched her email for the list of baseball players – young men who were
supposed to live forever.
On Megan’s computer screen we could see that some were being loaded on
to stretchers, some still pulling each other out through the jagged-edge
windows. Who?
After Great Pain
Emily Dickinson
After great pain, a formal feeling comes—
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs—
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or centuries before?
The feet, mechanical, go round—
of Ground, or Air, or Ought—
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone—
This is the Hour of Lead—
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow—
First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –
An Infectious Smile
Amy Purkey
A smile. A huge, quirky smile. Even if you did not personally know David
Joseph Betts, you probably have seen his crooked smile sometime on the sidewalk
going to class or while eating in Marbeck. His smile was infectious and when
anyone around him saw the smile, they too, had to smile and laugh. My day always
consisted of seeing David’s beautiful smile and even if I was in a bad mood
that day, my face would brighten and a huge grin would come over my face.
Out, Out
Robert Frost
The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the
yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
Funeral Blues
W.H.
Auden
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone.
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone.
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
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All material is copyrighted to the original authors.
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In
memoriam
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Once, a scientist suspended a kitten in mid-air, trying to prove
something about walking and thinking. My thoughts were like that kitten –
soft, disoriented, flailing its legs but not going anywhere. I had an exam to
write. There was no way to write the exam. There was a prayer meeting at ten. We
pinned ourselves to ten o’clock.
I
found the beginning of C.S. Lewis’s A
Grief Observed:
"No
one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the
sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same
restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing." – C.S. LewIS
Swallowing, I wrote emails to my classes.
Hundreds gathered in Founders at ten o’clock, sitting thigh-to-thigh in
the bleachers, waiting. Randy Keeler’s prayer was brief and apt. Then he gave
us silence – and into that silence came a sniffle. Then another. Then one
more. They came one at a time, each moist gasp distinct, across and around the
room, like raindrops breaking through. Love these people, God said. It’s easy.
What I Know about Melancholy
Jeff
Gundy
Never seen the quarry
so high. Still frozen, the ice thick
but cracked, puddled, tempting.
I know better
but I love to imagine being
reckless.
Rain
Vachel Lindsay
Each
storm-soaked flower has a beautiful eye.
And this is the voice of the stone-cold sky:
“Only the boys keep their cheeks dry.
Only the boys afraid to cry.
Men thank God for tears
Alone with the memory of their dead,
Alone with lost years.”
Sunflower
Rolf Jacobsen
What sower walked over earth,
Which hands sowed
Our inward seeds of fire?
They went out from his fists like rainbow curves
To frozen earth, young loam, hot sand,
They will sleep there
Against Consolation Robert Cording
The lecturer is talking
about Weil’s essay on “Detachment.”
The scent of lilacs
intoxicates the air inside the room,
The Buck in Snow
Edna St. Vincent Millay
White sky, over the
hemlocks bowed with snow,
Saw you not at the beginning of evening the antlered buck and his doe
Standing in the apple orchard? I saw them. I saw them suddenly go,
Tails up, with long leaps lovely and slow,
Over the stone wall into the wood of hemlocks bowed with snow.
Send comments to:
Inspiration Point
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March
2, 2007
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Later I put C.S. Lewis on my office door, and then I hunted for Emily
Dickinson, who has much to teach us about grief. I remembered moments when grief
broke through – once with Frost’s “Out, Out,” and once with Auden’s
near-maudlin “Funeral Blues.” And because this is the English department,
the other faculty thought of poems, too. And Pam Nath emailed one from New
Orleans. And some of the students began to write.
Reading and writing about loss and grief is a time-honored way to get
through. One of the things writing is for is to help us through grief and loss.
Slowly we gathered this collection. The first wave of mourning has
engulfed us and then retreated again, but we’ve learned it is only the first
wave. So here we share some of the words that helped us return our paws to the
ground, take one step forward, then another.
We invite you to read – and to write, and share what you’ve written.
Take in what others write, breathe out your own words. This is one way to keep
loving each other.
March
Shannon McKeehen
"I don't know why we're making
such
a big deal," he said Monday, his
gray
baseball cap a cloud covering his
fear.
We left in bunches, our eyes tracing
the lines in the carpet.
Gray lines.
Reminders
Amy Purkey
Purple ribbons, baseball games
Second base, Number 4
Guitars, ping-pong:
Reminders of you
The
Origins of Baseball
Kenneth Patchen
Someone had been walking
in and out
Of the world without
coming
To much decision about
anything.
The sun seemed too hot
most of the time.
There weren’t enough
birds around
Elegy
with Matchbox Bus and Andromeda - for the seven dead in Atlanta, March 2007
Jeff Gundy
I.
To get there I drove two hours through rain and storm to Detroit,
waited in the crowds to get on the plane, waited on the plane and flew
through thunder, everything bumpy and slow, got in two hours late.
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Links
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Interested in baseball poems? click below  Baseball
Almanac
After exploring these poems, use your back button to return to Inspiration
Point.
Walking
with Grief
George MacDonald
Do not hurry
as you walk with grief;
it does not help the journey.
Walk slowly, pausing often:
do not hurry
as you walk with grief.
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