The hurt of reality can become a constant agony if we are unable to accept the endless flow of life and not rejoice in its variety and celebrate its creative advance into the unknown.  My mother was alive to me in the reality with which I had wrapped myself; that world burst as the family entered the funeral parlor.  I had dreaded this moment; the penultimate things that we humans feel the need to say to each other were already said and understood by both of us–I had always loved her and she had always loved me; there was something so elemental in our relationship that more addenda was simply superfluous.  So I did not want to evaluate the beautician’s or the mortician’s skill; I did not want to view a hollow shell that bore no resemblance to the living whirl-a-gig that was my mother.  The first half-hour in the funeral home was torment for me; as I entered I was unable to breathe, my breath felt as if it had been sucked out of me, and I was overcome with emotion.  I hurt all over, every part of me wept and would not be consoled.  When I thought I would never recover, I did, in time to stand and speak about my mother, to color our memory of her with authenticity bereft of cliches that so often are uttered in eulogies and have no connection to the life being celebrated.

This has been a season of mileposts for me.  I became a grandfather on our nation’s birthday and subsequently, in a little over a month’s time, my mother died and I turned sixty-four–today, in fact.  We often are seduced by the notion of infinity–a delicious prospect on many levels and just as daunting and dismaying on others–but we fail to comprehend the freedom and limitations of finitude.  Probability ascribes to me a remaining longevity that can be reasonably calculated by the addition of all of my digits(fingers, toes and thumbs) with the caveat that scientific discoveries may require something more extensive than digital enumeration: this little piggy went to market…might embark on a journey slightly longer than we anticipated.  When I extend my hand, in truth, there are times I see the wrinkled, spotted hands of an old man, but more often I am reminded of persistence even in the midst of the ephemeral nature which is our life long habitat.  There are so many tasks left undone; many are daunting, but they are all the obligation of the living.  We’ve endured so much how can we not be intrepid as we shape the future?

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it

– Omar Khayyam

Morning brings renewal whether or not we approve; it brings a perspective that we may accept or reject but it always provides us with a moment of innocence, a moment in which all that ever was can be remade in an inexplicable alliance of possibilities. We cannot undo what has come to pass or unhook the world from its orbit; we cannot perform a cosmological legerdemain and revivify the matter which has spent itself or master the soul’s surcease with an esoteric alchemy. Life begets death and death begets life, a tarantella we must all dance and, none or few of us, depending on one’s perspective, ever master.

I found myself strangely like the daydreaming student in Reed’s poem, gazing out on an imaginary Eden, constructing a haven of memories as the world droned on about the parts of its machinery, ineluctably, mechanically, methodically, routinely–dentist appointments, dental insurance claims, car inspections. What war demands is fomented from genius which has not bridled passion to bear witness to love; and, instead, sees itself as the object of all affections. Breaking down a rifle is not a paradigm for a life, not even if my mother, was by some reckoning, a cocked, Sicilian pistol; however, the process by which we compartmentalize a life may very well differ only in the naming of the parts: she was born on… her parents were… married on.. she worked for… retired… is survived by her husband… her children… her grandchildren… her great grandchildren… family will receive at… in lieu of flowers…

In my reverie I construct a thousand scenes, all of which paint her differently, portray her with loving tenderness but do not censor the salty repartee with which she could deflate the puffiest ego–mine was not exempt and suffered an occasional bruise as I tumbled from an untenable and precarious perch. When we draw near as friends and family to pay our respects, to honor her life, to share our memories, try as we might, there will remain an emptiness within the fullness of our remembrances for as the poet reminds us of the fragility of balance: for this we have not got.

While I wrote this poem nearly a decade ago on mother’s day, it remains faithful to the life and spirit of my mother, the indecipherable bond between parent and child, the inextinguishable flame which is implicit and guides us in all of our journeys.

Millennial Mother’s Day

I dialed several times before you answered
and several more before I got the number
right.
Hello
the voice as distant as it was dulcet
labored from years stashed away
like pennies in those glass bottles
lurking in the corners and dark places
of your rooms with their thin necks
stretched like cranes swallowing fish.

Of course you were surprised,
sometimes, the voice eludes you,
runs behind your memory like
the child you recall used to play
hide and seek beneath the street
lamps poking holes in summer nights.

Hi Mom, happy mother’s day.
How are you? Our conversations
have the regularity of our age,
spaced as the years increase,
they have become brief but epic
paeans to codify our strange chronology.

I’m OK. My back hurts when I lift
anything; walking’s hard but I
ain’t getting no operation on my back
at my age. The time in between my calling
sheds all forms of mechanism. There is no longer
any duty left, no rancor at being forgotten,
at least in my own tightly spinning universe,
until the next time I tap out the number
of my home, by rote and heart. She answers
if she’s there
and if she has made the trip
to her Mecca by the sea, Atlantic City, balancing
bouncing bus rides and the kalaediscope
of neon lights, spinning wheels, and the incubi
who whisper hoarsely to her of precious maps
to unimaginable fortune; or weighing how much
flesh she has left to barter for this respite
which requites the sacrifice of youth made
much too soon; he answers. Lucid now
when medicated, strong & powerful in my
memory of him. I see him mostly this way;
weak only when I measure my own fragility
against the encroaching ages of my children.

But she is there this time and we pause,
a reflection of distance and resignation
rushes by like a pleasant memory
which distracts but does not color
itself with time or place or people.
Our voices evoke an unspoken trace
of parent, child; something lingers,
her heartbeat in her breath, the young
woman in photographs, the rasp of
tobacco and hot nights of shift work
in factories since she left high school,
a girl’s dreams of field hockey exchanged
too prematurely for the secrets of adults,
something palpable that cannot be bound
with words.

Hardly a week goes by that I am not reminded of my old friend, that I catch myself preparing to fire off a quick email to him about the topic of the day.  I know better and were things returned to the way they were two years ago, the responses we would have provided each other would neither have altered the status quo nor reshaped the future despite our hope that it might forestall the ineluctable nature of our fate.  Confessions rarely modify behavior however truthful our admissions or optimistic our outlook.  Nevertheless, when introspection becomes self-indulgent, strays too long beside a pool of darkness, I will search out the faces of friends still shimmering with light and add to their promise my own:  I will remember.

While I reflect on and lament the loss of my dear friend and his premature passing, I am equally saddened that so many will never have the opportunity to know him personally.  James has been memorialized and celebrated by family and friends from the Yankee north in Maine to the sweeping southern landscape of North Carolina, and sometime this year as well, in his beloved Rift Valley in Kenya–his ashes will enrich the soil on two continents as his living did our lives.  His wife, Chris, provided me with this link that honors Jim’s commitment to conservation on the George River in Maine.

One question persists as one reflects on one’s life and it remains as steadfastly haunting as it is common among us humans: What will become of me? All religions have their own peculiar reply, but I find comfort in the reassurances of the human heart, the self contained metaphor of love, and the immortality that memory guarantees despite the inescapable mortality of its only source.

This morning my garden awaits the first of many days of unseasonably high temperatures, which local weather stations have forecast for the next one to two weeks. This part of North Carolina is already languishing in severe drought; each day we fail to receive any significant or sustained rainfall we are in danger of worsening conditions, which, if they persist, will plummet the piedmont triad into the most extreme category of drought. Presently, the consensus among meteorologists and environmentalists fixes our water shortfall at nearly 3.5 inches this year; this figure is greater than the same measurement at this period last year, and even more disparaging is the fact that last year was one of the driest seasons we have had for some time. While the local lakes and rivers have visibly rebounded from the benefit of a fair amount of early rainfall, aquifers and groundwater supplies lag far behind the levels that may be sufficient to permit recreational activities to resume on lakes and rivers. Several cities and municipalities erred when conservation restrictions were lifted prematurely instead of proceeding cautiously when evaluating the long term effects of the rain we received earlier this spring. I garden organically relying on organic fertilizer and compost made from nearly everything that I can layer into the various piles comprised of yard waste from pruning plants and shrubs, food scraps, coffee grounds, tea leaves, even the spent barley from my batches of homemade beer. Most of the garden vegetables benefit from copious amounts of mulch added over

layers of newspapers, which helps to eliminate weeds and retain moisture in the underlying soil. When newspapers eliminated heavy metals from the inks used on newsprint, I started saving bags of newspaper to use in the garden and putting only what I had left over into recycling bins. If I had a better supply of composted leaves, I’d eliminate tilling altogether and employ the methods of sheet composting made popular with the approach that Permaculture uses to grow plants and vegetables. However, I must add that I am quite proud of my 33 year old genuine Troy-built horse model tiller.

My family had a garden about as far back as my memory can be reliably trusted to recall. Both sets of grandparents had large, diverse gardens, so between the Sicilians and the German-Irish influence it was almost inevitable that I would be drawn to that activity, but with a range of plant variety that reflected the characteristics of both .

Besides, who can resist the thrall one one finds oneself under as one encourages life to spring from the soil, or submits to the lure of the Adamic mythos, the seductive metaphor which offers to refresh the tired soul in the morning mist of the Garden of Eden.

The roll call of fruits and vegetables in my garden proceeds from asparagus to zucchini. There was a time when I spent the cold winter months poring over seed catalogs as I lay the tentative plan for our garden in the spring. While I still leaf through the occasional Henry Fields or Gurneys in my magazine rack, I buy most of my seeds and plants (those that I don’t start myself) from a local seed store that I have frequented for almost 38 years; it is probably just my imagination but the seeds and seedlings I purchase there always seem to grow very well.

As temperatures rise above 90 and inch toward 100 in the next day or two, I will stress, though not nearly as much as my plants, over the effects of the unrelenting scouring that the Carolina sun can produce. Despite the oppressive heat, another day or two will offer the first harvest of squash, meanwhile the asparagus is already resting until next year as we have enjoyed its bounty many times this spring. Corn and tomatoes around the fourth of July usher in a festival of mouth-watering meals from the garden’s daily provisions. We have already begun to anticipate our summer splurge of BLT’s as we wait impatiently for the first luscious tomatoes to ripen. I like corn picked fresh and consumed right there in the rows but unshucked corn popped into the microwave for a few minutes yields marvelously fresh results, much better than water-logging those tasty kernels in a pot of boiling water. Ah, but there are so many firsts each year with a garden: blueberries more abundant than any preceding year that I can recall; blackberries for jam and wine; apples for apple butter nearer the fall; and, of course, the ever treacherous process of gathering the ripe, turgid crimson “tunas” from our massive prickly pear cactus for jelly and pancake syrup. The work to tend the garden is omnipresent as are those tasks most associated with the harvest: freezing, canning, and drying to preserve what is left over and shared with friends and family. So it was a special treat this morning for us to celebrate another seasonal first and top our homemade granola with mounds of fresh raspberries from our garden!

It would have been understandable if King had stopped with the issue of race; it was, after all, as unavoidable as the color of his skin. But by 1967 the United States’ role in Vietnam had refocused King’s activism; while the issues presented by slavery and subsequent years of racism, remained an integral part of his ministry, he realized that valuation had become solely an economic measure and was entirely emptied of any moral content. It wasn’t just a matter of the rich getting richer, an embarrassing indiscretion where the intoxication might wear off and be forgiven; it was decidedly less Victorian than a matter of manners. Race alone was too easy to overlook. We had years of experience at defining coded words to elude justice, to guarantee that the promise made at the founding of our republic was, in practice, extended to a privileged minority and thereby effectively withholding the exercise of those noble ideas through a maze of caveats imbedded in our legal system from the masses who were unschooled in the exotic handshakes which opened doors of opportunity.

King learned a hard lesson in the steamy tenements of Chicago when he brought his southern Christian movement north. The traditional conviviality of the all-embracing, mother church lost its voice in the cramped living quarters and teeming streets of a big city walled off from itself by social and economic class and race. The failure that MLK discerned was not the principle of non-violence and love that he saw at the heart of Jesus’ teachings but the cultural alterations society had adopted in spite of the essential truth of those teachings: the spirit was alive but the body was decaying. To his credit, King also recognized that it would be cavalier to abandon those who suffered with a simple call to wait for a better time and place when the individual soul was free of its broken temple. The promise land that King proclaimed he had seen was not a procrastinator’s panacea, a piece of rhetoric to forestall the attainment of what already should have been enjoyed by every living citizen of this country; it was not meant to calm the ire of denial that inflamed some to bitterness and distrust; it was meant to redirect all of that pent up energy to reconstruct America with the ideals of its original blueprints. As unseemly as the structures had become, the exteriors only indicated the existence of an offense which lay deeper: there was a spiritual corruption so entrenched and intractable that it defiled everyone, and with it all that this great nation had proclaimed that it was.

One of the great lies of war is that it is a solution; another prevarication of war is that it is necessary, that if choice were possible war would simply atrophy according to Darwinian precepts and we would be free of its thrall, its seduction of security and self-preservation. What MLK learned from the insufferable fragmentation of Chicago tenements was that the life draining conditions of poverty and segregation debauch the vitality of hope, destroy the will to succeed, and, ultimately, even deplete one’s strength to endure. War is a theater for the powerful, the well-placed, the privileged; however, for those who are sacrificed to feed its ravenous appetite, it is the great slaughterer of the uninitiated; it clears cities of its poor and uneducated, it deludes the easy patriots trumped up with flags and glib shibboleths, it indulges the spiritually indigent and it cajoles those whose ideals are so impoverished that their children’s ruination is a way to provide honor and meaning to life that they stoically perpetuate that falsehood.

Last night was bittersweet. The reader conjured up just enough of the mellifluous voice of Martin King to make one marvel at the strength and power of his words. Were he present, the Reverend King might have flashed his infectious smile as he led the congregation in a chorus of that Negro spiritual “Study War No More”.

I’m going to lay down my sword and shield
Down by the riverside
Down by the riverside
Down by the riverside
Going to lay down my sword and shield
Down by the riverside
Ain’t going to study war no more

Ain’t going to study war no more
Ain’t going to study war no more
Ain’t going to study war no more
Ain’t going to study war no more
Ain’t going to study war no more
Ain’t going to study war no more

I’m going to put on my long white robe
Down by the riverside
Down by the riverside

Down by the riverside
I’m going to put on my long white robe
Down by the riverside
Ain’t going to study war no more
I’m going to talk with the Prince of Peace

But I think that his quick rejoinder to us when the music stopped would have been: we do need to study war. We need to look at it from all sides, in all lights, because if we truly look we cannot fail to recognize how distorted and skewed a perspective it is. I share King’s pacifism, his non-violent ideals, and served as a conscientious objector although I confess that as a young man I felt disappointed after reading the Bhagavad Gita. Youth demands answers and not multiple choice selections, it requires definitive, concrete, inescapably obvious methods to achieve the desired result. Youth eschews conundrums so the elevated dialog which takes place between the warrior Prince Arjuna and Krishna, an avatar of god, on the battlefield before the start of the Kurukshetra war did not offer the certainty that I thought I would find in the text. Life is very much like the truth revealed in The Gita. Paths are infrequently straight and choices are never without either sacrifice or consequence. I have never stopped believing that war is not an answer, an acceptable or appropriate response one human being makes to another. What I do know is that war exists because we want it to exist. There is a part of us that remains vigilant for the opportunity to destroy life rather than to preserve it, to ennoble it. If Martin King had been there last night he would have basked in the sweetness of the praises he received, the inspiration his words still provided 40 years after his passing. He might also have wept, for the bitter reality is that his words are the hallow echoes that remain of his vibrant life, and are still the most powerful replies to the injustice we face. It is not time to put the greatness of Martin Luther King to rest, but it is time for new voices to speak, time to author messages which reflect the present and not be content to recite the glories of the past. George Fox’s penetrating question uttered to Margret Fell near the end of the fifteenth century transcends its archaic phrasing to get at the root of responsibility with unmatched clarity: What canst thou say?

Her husband had asked me if I would come re-connect his computer and peripherals after workmen installing new carpet had left them with a non-functioning array of disconnected cords, cables and equipment in their wake.  I agreed.  I have volunteered to help friends and family alike over the years with computers and software. So it was not even a week ago that I had chatted with Joyce before leaving and promised to convey her greetings to my wife that evening when she returned home.

But Joyce and Kermit were friends; a friendship cultivated from acquaintance through my wife’s work to a friendship grown lovingly over years in the truest medium: sharing –life, the intimacy of family, the laughter of camaraderie, the joy of play, the labor to work for a common cause.  We sat together in tents to rest during those early marathon walks for Relay for Life.  We attended retirement parties, anniversaries, celebrations, memorial services.  We were pupils in tutelage to their great love, ballroom dancing.  And yes, we danced, but not often enough or long enough.

Outside my window as I write this the wind gusts stir up a raft of leaves that quickly eddy out of sight.  The pasture beside me has been breached with asphalt and four of the seven proposed houses are nearly completed while 64 others obtrude on the remainder of the old farm.  Trucks, all manner of grading equipment rumble, carpenters fire nails resounding like bursting artillery from their air hammers, and the inescapable hum of busyness, of de-constructing and re-constructing, of the dizziness of motion turning, turning without direction, being without purpose, continues.  Brick, mortar, and wood fall together in an almost indistinguishable sameness splaying the verdant landscape in a sham refutation of the second law of thermodynamics.  What a strange balance life is: Its scales are oddly weighted with the precious and the mundane; and, at first glance, it is difficult to tell to which we really belong.

Aaron Shearer is arguably one of the most influential teachers of the classic guitar in the last fifty years from his first encounter and subsequent relationship with Andres Segovia to his indefatigable efforts to improve the status of the guitar as a serious concert level instrument as well as developing a rational methodology to best facilitate the instruction of technique and to maximize the leaning potential for students. It is not a coincidence that Aaron’s seminal work led him to establish three of the six earliest guitar programs in the United States including founding the first ever guitar program at Peabody Conservatory. Certainly his series of books on methods and pedagogy for the guitar have been the most widely sold, read, and used by teachers in guitar programs throughout the United States.

Our son, Joshua,was fortunate enough to study with Aaron during the early 1990’s when he completed both high school and college at NCSA and wanted to show his respect for his former teacher by attending the special events which were organized to celebrate the legacy of Aaron Shearer. Manuel Barrueco, David Tanenbaum, and David Starobin are among the most well known of the long list of Shearer students spanning those formative years at Peabody to his retirement from NCSA around 1995.

It was extremely fitting that Manuel Barrueco, considered by many to be one of the finest guitarists and musicians of our time, graciously performed as the solo artist in the Aaron Shearer Celebration Concert as a tribute to his former teacher. The concert was the capstone to the day’s festivities that included, among other activities, a biographical film about Aaron that was produced by former student, Michael Lawrence, and a dinner and reception at the chancellor’s house, all of which was made possible by a gift from Aaron’s loving wife, Lorraine.

Barrueco’s mastery of the guitar was evident from his stirring rendition of the Presto in Bach’s Sonata in G minor to the lyric artistry with which he captured the soul’s yearning spirit in Albeniz’s Granada from the Suite Espanola. However impressive the preceding pieces may have been, the final selection, Sevilla, also from the Suite Espanolla, was Barrueco’s finest moment; it was an opus of such exquisite quality that if one were forced to chose only one experience in life to preserve forever, surely, Manuel Barrueco laid claim to that memory with his performance of Sevilla.

One of the most endearing moments interjected itself quite unexpectedly following the rousing applause which elicited several encores from Barrueco. As Manuel was about to leave the stage, Aaron stood up and motioned to him. When Manuel approached, somewhat haltingly as this was not the sort of protocol he with which he was familiar, he realized that Mr. Shearer was requesting him to play a piece from his days as a student when he studied with Aaron at Peabody. The great guitarist was clearly shaken and embarrassed as he turned to the audience with a hapless shrug of his shoulders, his guitar dangling from one hand and said that this had never happened to him before. The old teacher had caught the student off guard. For a moment, Manuel wilted, as if he were a student once more, uncomfortable with the demands of his mentor, he stammered before regaining his composure, which he did with grace and a touch of humor by turning away from the audience to practice before he played the piece Aaron had requested.

Much to my surprise, as the audience was filing out, I noticed Manuel Barrueco, with his guitar case slung over his shoulder as my son often did when he was a student at NCSA performing in Crawford Hall, leaving Watson Chamber Music Hall flanked by admiring fans. It was evident that he was in no hurry to rush off; instead, he moved easily and affably among the gathering crowd, chatting, shaking hands, and posing for and with fans for photographs.

At 88, Aaron Shearer retains his passion for the guitar and works daily revising his books on instruction and pedagogy. His influence has been diverse and far reaching, inspiring musicians and teachers alike. Some seek out the concert hall to discover what the guitar holds for them, some maintain their quest without surfeit, while others manage to distill their own elixir, and like Aaron, constantly replenish it by offering it to those whose spirit still thirsts. My son’s path has been the latter one. He has endeavored to share and build upon the wisdom he gleaned during his studies with Mr. Shearer by starting his own studio, Allegro Guitar, in Tucson, Arizona with fellow guitarist, Jeff McKee. Imagine first a magnificent concert hall, staid and imposing. Now, imagine children, unfettered by all of the prejudices which that stately hall implies –the images stand in stark contrast to each other and highlight the horns of a dilemma. Perhaps Aaron’s labor is best understood as the first steps of a journey to make the guitar more accessible. The attainment of his dream is left in the hands of his students. Although Wallace Stevens was responding to Picasso’s painting, The Old Guitarist, these lines from his poem, The Man With The Blue Guitar, illustrate the artist’s search for meaning and its articulation.

It could not be a mind, the wave
In which the watery grasses flow

And yet are fixed as a photograph,
The wind in which the dead leaves blow.

Here I inhale profounder strength
And as I am, I speak and move

And things are as I think they are
And say they are on the blue guitar.

The Man With The Blue Guitar
–Wallace Stevens

Guilford has struggled to keep pace with the high moral standards and educational ideals of such exceptional people as Clyde Milner, David Parsons, Jr, Garness Purdom, Harvey Ljung, Robert Bryden, Carroll and Mary Feagins, Ann Deagon, Fredrick and Margret Crownfield, Hiram Hilty, Eva Campbell, Josephine Moore, Floyd Moore, William Parkhurst, and Daryl Kent to name just a few. While many talented individuals have acceded to the positions once occupied by those august members of Guilford’s community, only a few have displayed the subtle method of Quaker polity, which yielded to justice rather than the pressure of haste and power for the sake of its own arrogant display, while even fewer have discerned the need to cultivate the skills necessary to do so. Individual agendas now vie for the limited and dwindling resources of this small, private college, which has endured a number of publicity blunders in recent years, not the least significant of which was the detailed media pronouncement by Kent Chabotar, the current president of the college, that Guilford was not a Quaker College. For a man who touted himself as an accomplished fund raiser and one who has taught those techniques to other college presidents, some of which currently preside over campuses in this area, the decision to distance the the present image of the college from its distinguished past as the south’s only co-educational Quaker college, established in 1832 and in continuous operation since its founding, was a stroke of genius –the kind of savvy and prescience that has charted Guilford’s descent into mediocrity. The most recent example of a house divided and teetering on the edge of an educational and organizational abyss can be illuminated by a comprehensive investigation of the case involving Eleanor Branch who was denied tenure and subsequently dismissed from the faculty. Tenure rulings are commonplace in academia; however, the convoluted, protracted, and caustic nature of the adjudication of Branch’s case belied the college’s image of Justice as an impartial advocate for all. Interestingly, the advocates who distinguished themselves in speaking out for justice on behalf of Branch were members of the philosophy department. Those professors understood that conviction often involves risk and rarely endures without courage. They brought merit on themselves and acted in the best tradition of the man who established the philosophy department at Guilford, Carroll Spurgeon Feagins.

On October 27, 2007, Guilford will make a small gesture, which may rouse its battered conscience from its decades of slumber when it honors two of the people I mentioned above: Carroll and Mary Feagins. Carroll was a teacher, Friend, friend, and mentor to me. He was his own best instrument; and, his approach to teaching involved more often an indelible touch of such exquisite efficacy that his own personal and professional beliefs served as a catalyst for his students’ self-awareness and self-discovery rather than polishing them to mirror his own reflection. I loved the often disjointed side of Mary Feagins, the disarmingly intelligent woman whose terminus was always lucid while the route by which she arrived often was not. She was a poet whose gifts of wit and perception dispelled the image of hausfrau one might assume from her tenure as a professor of German and her talent as a gourmet cook, both of which served me well as a student and later as a house guest for a brief time after graduation. While Carroll’s health problems limited the extension of the kind of relationship we would both have preferred, Mary and I managed to deepen our esteem for each other after she and Carroll retired to Friends Homes. I met with Mary regularly as she worked feverishly to compete three books for publication; my role was rather insignificant: to be her technical guru to rescue her from the almost nonchalant, fearless aplomb with which she approached the computer –the one she talked to, the one with the animated paper clip that answered her. I learned not to question this poet’s imagery or her muse!

I was pleased that Guilford sent out this old photograph as an invitation to honor two dear friends this year during homecoming.

Today, just a week after throwing up our hands at each other, he while mowing his lawn, we, on our way to the park to walk, our salutation was lost; in a tearful phone call, the inaudible remorse of mortality, which stuns all of us with its irreversible logic, whispered, he passed this morning. In such moments lines from Wordsworth’s Intimations of Immortality come to us with perfect clarity even though an inescapable solitude may still haunt us:

Turn wheresoe’er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;
The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.