Hello Friends,
I’m speaking to you tonight through the words of others, keeping vigil a continent and an ocean away as my tribe gathers to be with a dear sister as she bears down in the hard labor of dying.
Most days go by one after the other without much notice, don’t they? At least for me. I may have a moment here or there of appreciation, but I realized today, thinking of my friend and all the love carrying her forward, even though none of us want her to go, I’m not astonished enough. I’m ashamed of that, but I also get it. Not much would get done if we were all walking around agape. I just realized writing that, the word agape, as in mouth open in wonder, is also the word for the highest form of love, spelled the same, but pronounced ah-gah-pay. According to the Greeks, this is the love of God for man, and the love of man for God. (Insert your pronouns as needed. The Holy Spirit doesn’t care.)
That is the kind of love I see radiating from my friend’s face in what will probably be the last photo I see of her. What a gift. Someday I will give a gift like that I hope, but today I just received it. I was with every moment today. I said no to all the little demands that seem so important. I cried and prayed with friends gathered by her side an ocean and a continent away. They never felt so close when I was right there with them.
Friends who’ve gone before are waiting. I can see them. One is swimming to an island in the center of a lake calling out “come on!” in between strokes, another is waving a cowboy hat, and another finally has wings like the fairy godmother she always was. One is now a white crow, and another is tuning her guitar and blending two stiff drinks, frozen margaritas with floaters. Spirits for the spirits. There will be dancing, for sure.
The poems I read here tonight in ceremony for her are also friends, and they will live forever as long humans give breath to them, so learn some by heart and speak them aloud.
May you find friendship in them as well. Light a candle. Sing for someone you love. Sing for love itself, deep and true, rooted in the dark where we all come from and go.
The Books Where You’ll Find These Poems:
Turn Up the Ocean, Tony Hoagland, Graywolf Press, 2022.
Alive Together: New and Selected Poems, Lisel Mueller, Louisiana State University Press, 1996.
Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: 50 Poems for 50 Years, Joy Harjo, W.W. Norton, 2023.
All of It Singing: New and Selected Poems, Linda Gregg, Graywolf Press, 2008.
Rounding the Human Corners, Linda Hogan, Coffeehouse Press, 2008.
Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems 1965-2003, Jean Valentine, Wesleyan University Press, 2004.
The Winged Energy of Delight: Selected Translations, Robert Bly, Harper Collins, 2004.
Courting the Dawn: Poems of Lorca, Federico Garcia Lorca, translated by Martin Shaw and Stephan Harding, Cista Mystica Press, 2019.
Kō aloha lā ea
Concentrate on love by way of the light
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