My Uncle Baba

Certainty, quietude, unearthly confidence
grounded not in a body or a mind
but in timelessness that continues.
A boisterous bellow.
We all share your laugh; a signature of sorts
an echo in those you leave behind.
My grandfather runs through your veins
as it does through my own and my son's.
Piercing eyes and a shock of white hair
set against rich, mahoghany skin.
A community Moses bridging troubled waters
to liberate and carry the shackled to the shores of freedom.

A diamond orator voice blending hues of light
in the crucible of your existence,
sourced from an ebony heart, pumped by an infinite
and almighty hand.
Smiles close the distance between
our of existences
your smile will be missed most.
Its fiery warmth a black ashen coal ready
to inflagrate and reduce us all to to the glorious
essence of our sacred and illumined core.

Let us each grieve in our own ways;
tears, fierce recommitement to action, surreal confusion,
a candle lit in a far away place, a stoic and soundless
perserverance, a prayer offered on a dark and beatuiful continent.
the shouts of children in quiet places.
All embraced.
Your important lesson; the myriad expressions of divinity
that come through us; evident even now in the grief that grips the room.
I will see you wherever soulfullness blossoms,
the shifting shapes of the candles flicker
the space between thoughts
the place where earth and sky eternally embrace.

Adrienne’s Song

There is a cruel voice in everyone’s head.
Today mine is lip syncing that I should not
weep for the loss of a hero.
After all, technically, I did not know her.
We shared no heritage, we barely ever met.
But since when was it true that the only way
to know someone was by blood or proximity?

Some souls courageously write their lives in words
And thus teach us all how to be.
Their life is their art, as much as art is their life.
This is how we come to know them and ourselves.
a resonance of souls, connecting, harmonizing
a common language beyond words and form.
It is no dream.
They speak of something deep and dear
And when you are still enough or quiet enough
Their rhythm becomes a part of you and you joyfully dance.

My beloved Adrienne,
I wonder if you know how many souls you set in motion
How many bodies sway, gyrate, tap, swirl, and swing
to the music you elevated. The music you gifted us.
Though for many years your own crooked and pained frame
hobbled on hard paths, you set the world free,
indeed you birthed us all
and allowed us to begin dancing.
I owe you my world and for this I am eternally grateful.
This is why I weep for this loss.

And to the hardened voice that would disparage this feeling,
I offer this space, this dulcet silence,
this stillness, these salty tears
Whose phrasing you shaped AR, with your own powerful breath and
which can easily hold all, the cacophony, the immense depth of
my gratitude and my raw grief for losing a soul whose beautiful, haunting
and rousing music helped conduct the tempo and sweet melody of this life here.

An Ode to Adrienne Rich, Poet, Feminist, Author, Essayist – and one of my supreme heroes who died March 27, 2012

Death

When you come death, may you be recognized and celebrated.
With your seductive face, gentle whispers,
and your unspoken promise
Let there be no fear as your steady hand
unlocks a new mystery
A mystery so vast and unfathomable that to begin to speak
of its depth is only to play the first note
in a never-ending symphony.
In you life joins hands.
May you be welcomed as a friend
for indeed you have been a companion to life
None is promised even a moment.
To exist, that is our gift.
All is so precious
The days I have shared
have been more than enough
Just this, Just this, Just this.

I witnessed from a distance a friend stoically rooted
to his family, community, the earth,
take your hand as you guided him across the threshold.
He faced you with such courage and compassion
And though his physical body shriveled as the cancer ravaged his insides
his belonging and his wholeness expanded beyond measure
We are not what we seem. There are no limits.
We all glowed in that presence.
And yet we grieve in that absence.

Death you will come for us all
And for all our scientific advances
The hour of your touch still eludes.
When the hour of your beckoning comes, may it be known that
the meaning of life, is life itself, no more, no less
May that which is here, revel, knowing that the love which came
through this, is this, played enchanting cadenzas while it lasted.
And may that which still plays be comforted by the cycle
of beauty in the inherited melody currently sung
but one day relinquished too.