You said [of the poet Tom Clark, who died recently] “he won’t disappear” (just like sister Susie hasn’t), and it called to mind Whitman’s lines:
“What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?
They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the
end to arrest it,
And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.
All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.”
― “Song of Myself”
And what do you think has become of the women and children?
They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the
end to arrest it,
And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.
All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.”
― “Song of Myself”
I wanted also to mention something interesting I’ve been doing with my poetry recently. In the spirit of “playing” with words, I found this website - https://www.home-speech-home.com/speech-therapy-word-lists.html - which is used by speech therapists to help people pronounce various word sounds. I’ve been enjoying just fooling around with the word lists as I’m writing a poem. For example, if I’ve just used the word “flow”, I might go to the list and click ‘f’, or maybe ‘l’, and browse through the list of words that contain those sounds, and, bingo, a word might jump out at me. It’s been fun. (I sometimes think of Fr. Hopkins and how much he would have enjoyed lists like these.)
More and more, I realize that “I” (whoever that is) don’t write “my" poems. It’s like Jesus said about the wind, that we can feel it but we have no idea where it came from or where it’s going. I just sit down at my laptop and relax and let the words start breezing through me onto the screen. It’s a totally mysterious process to me, but one I enjoy observing and appreciating. (Am I right in recalling that medieval writers often didn’t sign their writings because they believed God was the true author?)
I think of Susie a lot these days. Strange as it seems to say this, she is just as present to me now as when she was “alive”. I can see her clearly in my mind, can hear her voice, her laughter, can feel very strongly the values she stood for. She “died” but she is not gone - definitely not. I recall learning at SLUH in physics class ‘the law of the conservation of matter and energy’ — that matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed. If that’s true, then the atoms that made up Susie’s physical body are still with us, somewhere, perhaps in the wind or in trees or the sea or who knows. It seems Whitman was absolutely correct.
