Saturday, April 5, 2008

Thinking of You, B.

A dear friend lost her dad yesterday. It seems I've been here too many times, with too many friends. Dedicating a poem to him feels a little gimmicky, given my previous promotion of Poetry Month, but in truth poetry is where I go when nothing else makes sense. Poetry doesn't fix things (cancer obliterates dichotomies like broken/fixed), but it makes the pain more bearable. My favorite memories of Steve are him and B. dancing at her wedding, when we were younger and he would get home from work as the slumber parties were just winding down (or going to work just before they started to get crazy), and he was the only dad cool enough to have a (work-related) bundle of dynamite in the kitchen. B, T, and C...he will be missed, but not forgotten.

Nothing is Lost
Noel Coward

Deep in our sub-conscious, we are told
Lie all our memories, lie all the notes
Of all the music we have ever heard
And all the phrases those we loved have spoken,
Sorrows and losses time has since consoled,
Family jokes, out-moded anecdotes
Each sentimental souvenir and token
Everything seen, experienced, each word
Addressed to us in infancy, before
Before we could even know or understand
The implications of our wonderland.
There they all are, the legendary lies
The birthday treats, the sights, the sounds, the tears
Forgotten debris of forgotten years
Waiting to be recalled, waiting to rise
Before our world dissolves before our eyes
Waiting for some small, intimate reminder,
A word, a tune, a known familiar scent
An echo from the past when, innocent
We looked upon the present with delight
And doubted not the future would be kinder
And never knew the loneliness of night.

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