On Elegy
It's odd to engage elegy as a passion and, yet, so it comes to one with the
passing of a father, any family member or close friend. A passion that does
not come for a passing moment, but enshrines itself, a quilt work of
stitched moments - appearances and disappearances - as the ghost of the
absent appoints itself as a member of our days, including, most forcefully,
one's dreams at night, but, then again, as a presence on the street, in the
countryside, or on the waters in the days and months that follow.
Neither is this a benign appearance - but, perhaps - more like something of
an argument. The beloved refuses an amputation, one in which we are allowed
to quickly forget, erase everything except a monument that one erects upon a
ground or, say, as a poem or an obituary that free us from any further
intrusion into our lives.
No, at least for those of us who choose to remain open, as I suggest -
wittingly or not - we must to these places where one finds him or herself at
what one can only call untrained waters, or, switching elements, an earth
that slips away and will not forgive until you, the bereaved, provide an
answer, a calling out, a witness, an incorporation, then a release, a
grievous release, where what one senses is fundamentally shrill, a bondage
which begins to slowly subside. The house of the beloved is disassembled.
Through the floor beams one sees a rich, dark earth and one says, now we can
move on; we have the provision, a fertile one, to do so.
"She no longer walks these hills."
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