So Indelibly There.

Painting by Munch:  one of my favorite artists.  I was obsessed by his work in art school.

Vicky (My Incentive) recently did an entry on Donne's "Death Be Not Proud," a poem I have always loved.  Death is a subject many of us do not like to contemplate; it's a subject that's omnipresent in my own work because I keep trying to understand the human experience in light of our mortality.  One aspect that intrigues me is the idea of the womb/tomb--the fact that life can't exists without death.  My last entry was dedicated to the mothers; how awesome it is to think that when we give birth, we are giving birth to a person who will one day die.  We are giving birth to death.  Our own own wombs have written of for centuries as symbolic of the earth-womb, which will one day take us in.  The Writers Almanac poem below is a wonderful one of awakening--the speaker awakening to the awesome knowledge of death.

Poem: "Calf Born in Snow" by Patricia Gray, from Rupture. © Red Hen Press, L.A. Reprinted with permission.

Calf Born in Snow

I can still hear the loud moan
in my grandfather's kitchen,
where the woodstove was open
for the failing fire's warmth, and
on the oven door, wrapped
in an old quilt, lay the new Charolais calf-
a twin that survived its snowy birth
that morning, though its brother died-
both of them the color of muddy snow,
this one too weak to stand.

We tried to feed him his mother's milk,
but he seemed to forget he was eating
and slept, so that by ten that night, when
he raised his head suddenly, making
a loud maa-a-a-a sound, I could scarcely
believe it. "He's getting better!"
Dad put his hand on my shoulder.
"Quiet. He's dying," was all he said-
old knowledge, deep as the Blue Mountains.
Still, I'd witnessed that final, wonderful
rallying, as if every ounce of life pulled
together to raise the calf's head,
to leave his sound so indelibly there.

I love how the father says, "Quiet..."  I remember how my own grandmather told me to be quiet after she had learned of John Kennedy's assassination.  I was only 7 and didn't really understand what was happening, but her reaction made me pull into myself,  into deep thought--I knew something awesome had happened within her and to the country.  She was a quiet woman and didn't often express herself.  So when she did, I really paid attention.

I will never forget that day; and my memory hinges on that moment--her shushing me.  "Be quiet," she said, "The President's been shot.  The President is dead."