Steven Schroeder | on the 35th of May
1.
Sister moon slipped through my kitchen window
late last night when I was stirring something
sweet – pecans sauteed in a splash of honey,
oats and coconut toasted golden brown
in butter, a handful of raisins dried
in the sun. She caught my eye when I turned
and said she’d spoken with you earlier
and had come to let me know that you are
fine. I saw you plain as day and smiled,
thinking that means the world, for now, is too.
Sister moon went on her way, and I chopped
an apple, mixed it with a handful of blueberries,
then stirred them together in the butter
still on the bottom of the skillet where
the oats and nuts had been. I gave them time
to soften a little and blend, then scattered
the pecan and oat melange on top
and sat down to enjoy them by moonlight.
2.
I think of silence, how it still speaks
louder than the voices throttled by one
state or another here and there, now
and then, again and again, and in my
mind’s eye I see a painting you sent, one
in a series you’d named “plays and days”
in defiance, you said, of Hesiod.
I love the work and am reminded
that Kahlil Gibran said work is love
made visible. I have not lived with Hesiod
as I have lived with Homer, obsessed
with rendering the first word as it should be.
But I have often thought of him as
a co-conspirator in writing
the epic opposite wars that never end
and treacherous journeys home from them,
an epic of farming, tending the land, not
making a wasteland of it. This is the way
the world ends, and in the light of sister moon
I think in spite of everything it will be well.
3.
Yesterday was the anniversary
of my father’s death, and in the light
of sister moon I smile remembering
that he never stopped being a farmer.
And I know every day marks the death
of countless fathers and mothers and
daughters and sons and sisters and brothers.
But the old cannot kill the young forever.
We are large, we contain multitudes,
and, simple as grass, we go on
making love visible, the first word
and the last, as it should be. All
will be well, all will be well, all
manner of things will be well.
Chicago
4 June 2023
