Benefit.

Curtis, Edward S. Curtis Self-Portrait - Field Attire, 1899

The passing of every old man or woman means the passing of some tradition, some knowledge of sacred rites possessed by no other.  Consequently the information that is to be gathered, for the benefit of future generations, must be collected at once or the opportunity will be lost for all time.

Edward S. Curtis, from Visions of a Vanishing Race

Ancient.

In your clay body, 

things are coming to expression and to light

 that were never known before,

 presences that never came to light or shape

 in any other individual.  

To paraphrase Heidegger, who said,

 "Man is a shepherd of being," 

 we could say,  "Man is a shepherd of clay." 

 You represent an unknown world

 that begs you to bring it to voice.  

Often the joy you feel 

does not belong to your individual biography 

but to the clay out of which you are formed. 

 At other times, 

you will find sorrow moving through you, 

like a dark mist over a landscape.

  This sorrow is dark enough to paralyze you.

  It is a mistake to interfere 

with this movement of feeling.  

It is more appropriate to recognize

 that this emotion belongs more to your clay

 than to your mind.

  

It is wise to let this weather of feeling pass; 

 it is on its way elsewhere.  

We so easily forget that our clay

 has a memory that preceded our minds, 

a life of its own 

before it took its present form.   

Regardless of how modern we seem, 

we still remain ancient, 

sister and brothers of the one clay. 

 In each of us 

a different part of the mystery

 becomes luminous.  

To truly be and become yourself, 

you need the ancient radiance of others.

John O'Donohue

Wading.

Rockwell, Grandpa and Me, Fall, 1948

BURNING LEAVES

Autumn leaves are raked into piles

Unceremoniously packed into

Plastic or paper bags

Carted from curbside

By city workers driving big city trucks.

Years ago

We burned Autumn.

Our neighborhood smelled of smoking sycamore

As my father and I swept flakes

Of wind-whipped fall.

As he cradled his pipe on his lip

He puffed on it,

Sending skyward the

Wiggling waves of smoldering tobacco.

The smoke wafted through the forest of

Emptied branches of our stand of trees.

The same matches he struck to

Kindle his pipe

Also fired the sycamore leaves

Making two smoky streams

Which spiraled upward

Into the late October air.

As he pulled on his pipe

Dad heaped our burning leaves

Carefully checking their fiery crackle.

Lightheartedly, I leap-frogged outside fire’s lick

Skimming its top,

Playing catch-me-if-you can

With the flames singeing fingers.

As Dad chuckled

I chased wind-blown runaway leaves

As if they were horses needing

To lassoed, herded back, and corralled

To our burning pile.

In my memory

Are visions of my father in the prime of his life

And I in the schooldays years of mine.

Working together

We raked our yard of its Autumn offerings.

We stepped beneath the stretching sycamore trees

Which surrendered

Brown dried leaves

Marking the season’s change.

Under the tree limbs vacant of their leafy vestments

Were conversations

Between my father and me.

In the chill of the breeze, we chatted.

Through the smoke in the air, we spoke.

As we warmed ourselves by the fire

We tended at curbside.

Sharing the moments

We were two generations

Connected by blood

And surrounded by piles of autumn

Which had fallen on our green lawn.

It has been many years since those days

But I miss the times of autumn burnings

And conversations in the smoke-filled air.

But memories of them

Are as secure as those of my

Father and me

Wading through waves of October crunch,

Smelling our sycamore aflame.

Leon Douglass Bibb

Walk.

His hand would cover my head like a stocking cap and guide my travel through the congregation after church.  

My Great-Grandpa Karl, born eighty years to the day before me ...

There is divine beauty in learning.  To learn means to accept the postulate that life did not begin at my birth. Others have been here before me, and I walk in their footsteps. The books I have read were composed by generations of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, teachers and disciples. I am the sum total of their experiences, their quests. And so are you.

Elie Wiesel

Applauded.