It was summer, remember?
The world belonged to big
people, parents and other
adults, all big. Except for
a gift, the morning after
a lightning storm.
Puddles glistened, crows were
silent, fishermen made their
momentary appearances in oil
paint before you made them
all disappear: their boats, the
telephone wires, the summer
cottages, everything erased
except light and trees
and water.
Every thing appeared again later
after you opened your eyes.
You were a child, remember?
You, the one who disappeared
miles and years ago?
The trees and the lake haven’t
paid the slightest attention
to your absence.
You were a wiser child then,
when you knew nothing, when
a luminescent summer
morning opened its forest
arms, as dark and deep as
a storm at night, as wild
and blue as the wings of
your imagination.
Pay attention, she’ll move soon. I fumble for the mechanical pencil, open the sketchbook, catch the shape of her back and head. Wait! She moves. No, no, the lead’s jammed in the barrel, no time to fix it, use the pen.
“Welcome to Delta Airlines Flight 4057 to Seattle. We will begin boarding soon.”
She sits almost straight up. Pay attention to the slump of her head. Polka-dotted pants? No time, remember colors, fill them in later. What’s her story? Is Jayne still alive? The hospice workers should be with her today.
“Flight 4057 to Seattle pre-boarding now. Passengers needing assistance, and
active duty US Military personnel welcome to board.”
She’s flying to Seattle. Grandchildren? Something prim about her, pretty hair, but pink socks? Seattle’s just a stop on my way to Whidbey Island. Stop thinking, pay attention, draw!
“Boarding now for 1st class passengers.”
Her body looks OK, but the angle of her head doesn’t. Start another sketch, skip the details, draw faster, not much time, the slump looks better, but I’ve lost her face. She stands up, pockets her book and disappears into a line of passengers.
“Main cabin passengers now boarding.”
I close my book, put the pen away and join the queue.
Hours later on the Island, the hospice workers have gone back to their own homes. Jayne slumps in bed. Her husband Tim, my brother, props her up on pillows. I can’t bear to draw her. We hold hands. She talks in a whisper, but soon she falls asleep.
Tim and I and her other caregivers, Ruth and Jake, their children, share a bottle of Spanish wine. I paste the label and the bee in the sketchbook two days later, after I’ve flown back to California, after saying goodbye to Jayne for the last time.
I know the truth.
Forget all other truths.
No need for people
anywhere on this earth
to struggle.
For what? Poets?
Lovers? Generals?
Look: it is evening,
Look: it is nearly night.
The wind is level now,
the air is wet with dew.
Soon all of us will sleep
Beneath the earth,
We, who never let each other
Sleep above it.
Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941)
None of us are strangers to darkness. I don’t mean the darkness that ends each day with the sun setting in the west like a postcard photograph. I don’t mean the even darker darkness of Nature, the rising rivers that overflow towns, the winds that roar throughout the night uprooting trees and blasting our homes into splinters and heaps of bricks and twisted metal.
I mean the darkness of other humans who invade our lives against our wishes. I mean drones and tanks and guided missiles that deliberately annihilate human beings and destroy their hospitals, schools and homes and churches. I mean lawmakers and politicians who regard the murder of children as the normal, acceptable costs of “doing business” in freedom’s land and bravery’s home.
We’re supposed to light candles, not curse the darkness. Sometimes it feels impossible not to curse darkness; there’s so much of it. And lighting candles seems so useless and inadequate: do prayers and candles ever bring back the ones we love from their graves into our arms?
Candles come in many forms. Every Spring, tulips bloom and then their petals wither and collapse back into the earth. I hope a year from now we all will still be here to see again the light they bring into our lives.