Not Like a Bear

In Memorium Ashley Morris

Not like a bear; instead like a mountain
where bears hunt, breed cubs and gorge on honey.

Not like a mountain, cold stone and hard snow,
but like Fuji behind cherry blossoms.

Not something looming in the backround but
the foreground figure that makes the landscape.

Not the place itself: just one more mortal
living in the shadow of the ruins,

kissing the wife and kids goodbye one day
then catching the car to Eleusis Street.


Someone suggested I might read this at an Ashley Morris benefit, and I looked at it again and was not entirely satisfied. Here is a newer version, that I will tuck into my pocket tonight along with a printout of And Death Shall Have No Dominion, should I find myself pushed out on the sgage.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You should read this, or have someone do it, at the upcoming FYYFF event on the 26th. I have completed a prose tribute to the great man but am unsure just where to send it.

"Eleusis Street"! What a perfect street name that would make (and might, in a future work of fiction, unless you stop me)! As it happens, the Eleusinian Mysteries (there's your cross street) were dedicated to Demeter and Kore -- the familiar name for Persephone, which brings us back to the land of the living, a quick bike ride down the street. (Google and Wiki have made me a much more facile intellectual than Yale ever did!)