ForeverMissed
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Perfection Wasted, by John Updike

June 4, 2020
And another regrettable thing about death
is the ceasing of your own brand of magic,
which took a whole life to develop and market —
the quips, the witticisms, the slant
adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest
the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched
in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears,
their tears confused with their diamond earrings,
their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat,
their response and your performance twinned.
The jokes over the phone. The memories packed
in the rapid-access file. The whole act.
Who will do it again? That's it: no one;
imitators and descendants aren't the same.
---
Thank you for sharing this with me, Eva Kosta

When a Good Mother Sails from this World, by Clarissa Pinola Estes

June 4, 2020
When I say, ‘My mother has died’,
I mean my ‘most beloved’.

Leave me to myself now,
for I am a ship who’s
lost her riggings;
suddenly
come unmoored.

My mother has died;
She has earned her rest now,
waiting only, and proudly so,
for her sails
to be taken down.

I, the daughter,
see to the mending of my mother’s sails;
I seek her
worn and broken
threads of light,
reweaving her dazzling linen.

And though there be broken threads
not able to be rewoven,
I will gently pull the edges together
and stitch one side to the other…
and if not able to be mended,
then I will patch with parts
from my own most earnest life
over the places where my mother’s life
was worn through,
. . . or never was.

Over time, the sails of the mothership
will be fitted to the daughtership;
raised up on the mainsail,
and the final touch –
the red ragged flag – hers –
will be flying topmast of my ship.

I’ll be let down into the waters then,
I, the daughter, will glide again…
but this time, under the best sails
inherited from my mother…
and all the mothers of the motherlines
before her.

Ay, Mother, let me tell you
my treasured dearie-dear,
one last thing I have learned
from your spirit passing through me
as sparkling shadow passes
through darkening shadow,
on this open night-sea journey…

I am learning to navigate
by the mysteries of the farthest stars –
the ones that the great wake of your passing
has revealed to me
for the very first time.
----
Thank you for sharing this with me, Sandra Mitchell

On the Beach at Night, by Walt Whitman

May 26, 2020
On the beach at night,
Stands a child with her father,
Watching the east, the autumn sky.

Up through the darkness, 
While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,
Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky,
Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east,
Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter,
And nigh at hand, only a very little above,
Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades.
From the beach the child holding the hand of her father,
Those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all,
Watching, silently weeps.
Weep not, child,
Weep not, my darling,
With these kisses let me remove your tears,
The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious,
They shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in apparition,
Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the Pleiades shall emerge,
They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall shine out again,
The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again, they endure,
The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons shall again shine.
Then dearest child mournest thou only for Jupiter?
Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars?
Something there is,
(With my lips soothing thee, adding I whisper,
I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,)
Something there is more immortal even than the stars,
(Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,)
Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter
Longer than sun or any revolving satellite,
Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades.

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