This work is another in my series of The Christ Tree poems, and I am including it here in this most recent series of images as a dedication to a dear friend of ours who we heard had passed away suddenly, unexpectedly, while we were recovering from Covid.
Dave Senior was a gentle, kind man, an incredibly talented designer and illustrator, and we will miss him terribly. Dave always encouraged and supported my work, and I will miss his quiet guidance. Our thoughts are with his family.
Dave found his own healing in the natural world, and I am sure he is following his own river, down to the sea. On the other hand, I am not sure what the influence of Dante might be, and I would think it quite strange to read somewhere that one of my contemporaries had been influenced by him. How very grand, I would think. But death, being so much more approachableβ either here or just around the bendβhas always been an influence.
What I mean to say is that death is common. If you are having a good time and you conceive the possibility that the good time will end, then you are concerned with death, though in a mild and unremarkable way. But what I want to get to is something else: that death is the central concern of lyric poetry. Lyric poetry reminds us that we live in time.
It tells us that we are mortal. It celebrates or recognizes moods, ideas, events only as they exist in passing. For what meaning would anything have outside of time? Even when poetry celebrates something joyful, it bears the news that the particular joy is over. It is a long memorial, a valedictory to each discrete moment on earth.
