Rest in Peace Sue Creed

Every Wednesday she came over and soul collaged with me. One day she was flipping through magazines and pulled out this poem. She loved it. When I was looking over the funeral file she left for us, I found the poem tucked into one of her collages. It reminds me of a Spring day, last year, when she still had zest and vitality in her body, when she could talk shit and laugh out loud. It reminds me of her Spirit that is now free...

So to her, I launch this poem, in the love of freedom and life.

Of Yield and Abandon

A muscular, thick-pelted woodchuck,

created in yield, in abandon, lifts onto his haunches. 

Behind him, abundance of ferns, a rocks wall's 

coldness, never in sun, a few noisy grackles.

Our eyes find shining beautiful

because it reminds us of water. To say this

does not make fewer the rooms of the house

or lessen its zinc-ceilinged hallways.

There is something that waits inside us,

a nearness that fissures, that fishes. Leaf shine

and stone shine edging the tail of the woodchuck silver,

splashing the legs of chickens and clouds. 

In Russian, the translator told me,

there is no word for "thirsty"--a sentence,

as always, impossible to translate.

But what is the point of preserving the bell

if to do so it must be filled with concrete or wax? 

A body prepared for travel but not for singing? 

--Jane Hirshfield