brushfire"This, yes, this, it was always like this." -Stanley Koehler
REFLECTIONS OF AN EMPTY NESTER
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My brother couldn’t pinpoint precisely when he lost track of the book. He had several copies; surely the signed copy our father gave him when he was 16 would turn up someday. While moving around as an adult, he stored some belongings in a spare room in our parents’ house. Perhaps the book — a collection of our father’s poetry published in 1969 — landed in a box we overlooked when clearing things out after our parents’ deaths. A bookseller must have picked it up at an estate sale or auction. Who knows how many stops it took on its journey or how long it languished in a dusty box or on a shelf? The title is The Fact of Fall. In late October, to celebrate the season, I posted on Facebook a picture of the book jacket, a black-and-white photo of a tree with its bare branches pointing skyward on a burnt-orange background. The image prompted a former neighbor who moved out of state — a retired English professor who met my dad some years ago — to comment she planned to order the book. “Sadly, I believe it’s out of print,” I responded, adding it was no longer available even on Amazon. The younger of my two brothers, as sentimental as our father but practical like our mother, had purchased the remaining copies so each of the grandchildren could have their own. My friend informed me she had located a copy — the last available — on a site called Thrifty Books, where she had found other out-of-print treasures. Several days later she sent me a private message. She had received the book and, upon opening it, realized it was an inscribed copy. On the flyleaf was written: “for Ray from Dad. … ‘So many ways to take / down which the summer passes.’” This was from the fourth stanza of a poem called “Picnic: Eridge Grange”: “Fourth is that older boy for whom / footpaths are not enough. / It is his silence they share. / In the openness of woods / his senses dwell aside; each fragrance / a way, so many ways to take …” Our father was in his late 40s when be wrote those words. The five of us, “all in view,” were walking ahead of him in a lane in the countryside of Kent, England, on our way to a picnic. If it was our 11-year-old brother’s silence we shared that day, it was because we were accustomed to following in the footpaths of his imagination. I, the youngest at 3, led the way along the meadow. In the opening stanza, my father wrote: “The smallest has a feather / in her hand. No use to her / but she’ll not let it go. / She thinks perhaps she’ll put it / in her hair. It falls, their feet go past. / Another loss is sealed, the / real, the fancied flight.” Next is my brother, “five summers counting this one.” The poet regards his younger son’s confidence with wistful envy: “Experience for him is a way / to eat bread; life as sandwich / sitting on a gate, / pitching the rest to cows. / The day is sure; beside the wood his hours / stretch like a path. He does not see / the bend, behind, that / will take him from view.” Third is the middle child, the younger of my two sisters. “The girl in the middle / stoops at times. / Something the dying trees give down / she carries to the light; / not to lose one.” I’m not sure what my sister picked up that afternoon so worthy of her examination. But I do recall her bending down to retrieve a fallen acorn at our father’s graveside the day of his burial, placing it with quiet reverence next to the urn containing his ashes. The poem concludes with my oldest sister, last in line on this path, though the one we look to for guidance on others: “Let her who comes last / bringing the picnic things pursue / no thoughts like these. Her braids / will grow; not a leaf / has fallen. Where meadows draw our eyes / so near the earth, we learn / the ignorance of cows / or children on a path / taking each other’s steps / not once looking back.” In these five brief stanzas, discovery overcomes loss, innocence transcends knowledge, light illuminates death, adventure vanquishes regret, and possibility conquers the passage of time. The poet bears witness to all of this, shielding his children with his words and the power of his love. My friend promises to hand-deliver the book the next time she’s in town. The prospect of its reunion with its rightful owner has shed new insight for me on the poem’s opening stanza. The book’s journey and ultimate return — “the real, the fancied flight” — are proof no loss, no matter how permanent, is ever truly sealed as long as imagination, memory and hope remain. This appeared in the Jan. 9, 2020 edition of the Grosse Pointe News.
1 Comment
Ray Koehler
10/26/2021 03:28:39 pm
An incredible poem and an equally enlightening analysis. The two belong together, sort of like a father and daughter. I should know. I am the one to whom this book found its way back, with some help from a most caring individual!
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Mary Anne BrushJournalist, fiction writer, wife and mother |