the light of their presence is gone
Five whole days without internets; update later. I got past the backlog of email and -
Margaret Mahy has died.
Sally Ride has died.
The world is a little less full of wonder and joy and delight in exploration and creativity.
I never met Ride. She was one of the early generation of astronauts, and more recent people like Eileen Collins meant more to me as hero-figures. But she's one of the reasons I wrote Seamstress. All thoughts to her partner of 27 years.
Mahy came to read at the local library one time, wearing her characteristic rainbow reading-wig. She gave a rendition of 'Down the Back of the Chair' that was a revelation of the possibilities of vowel and rhyme and rhythm; though I'd never read the poem before she read there, I could probably recite it now just from the memory of that reading.
I'm going to reread some piratical librarians of Mahy, as soon as Levertov's mourning-poem finishes running around and around in my head.
This is the year the old ones,
the old great ones
leave us alone on the road.
[...] The old ones
have taken away the light of their presence,
we see it moving away over a hill
off to one side.
[...]
we count the
words in our pockets, we wonder
how it will be without them, we don't
stop walking, we know
there is far to go, sometimes
we think the night wind carries
a smell of the sea...
Margaret Mahy has died.
Sally Ride has died.
The world is a little less full of wonder and joy and delight in exploration and creativity.
I never met Ride. She was one of the early generation of astronauts, and more recent people like Eileen Collins meant more to me as hero-figures. But she's one of the reasons I wrote Seamstress. All thoughts to her partner of 27 years.
Mahy came to read at the local library one time, wearing her characteristic rainbow reading-wig. She gave a rendition of 'Down the Back of the Chair' that was a revelation of the possibilities of vowel and rhyme and rhythm; though I'd never read the poem before she read there, I could probably recite it now just from the memory of that reading.
I'm going to reread some piratical librarians of Mahy, as soon as Levertov's mourning-poem finishes running around and around in my head.
This is the year the old ones,
the old great ones
leave us alone on the road.
[...] The old ones
have taken away the light of their presence,
we see it moving away over a hill
off to one side.
[...]
we count the
words in our pockets, we wonder
how it will be without them, we don't
stop walking, we know
there is far to go, sometimes
we think the night wind carries
a smell of the sea...