A Poem For Michael

I have been remiss in keeping up my blog due to a new job and also, sadly, due to grief.

I got the very bad news of Mike's death in Buzios, Brazil this Thursday. I was in a state of disbelief and anger and numbness. It is particularly senseless when some one is murdered, as our friend was, by gunshots. The presumed motive was the theft of his wallet and car which were later found burned. His friends stateside, including me, feel that he knew his attacker. There are many questions and I have spent a lot of time pouring over articles in Portuguese, trying to make sense of them and look for clues as to what really happened. I studied Portuguese for three years, it has been of little help- my Portuguese really sucks. So did Mike's, actually, though after seven years of living there I'm sure it had gotten better than mine! Today the first English language story about his death appeared on the internet. You can find it here.

I liked Mike's style. His weird vintage button-down shirts. The freaky smoking jacket with bedroom slippers he wore to our wedding. I liked that he rode a motorcycle to burningman and moved to Brazil. His humor was warped, which I also liked. He made a very bizarre joke to me once that I can't even describe here, though I remember it perfectly.

Tomorrow is the memorial service and I have decided to make feijoada in tribute to the American ex-pat who adored Brazil. I am also looking through old photos and searching for a poem to read.

There is only one Seamus Heaney poem I really like, though I feel I am supposed to like more. I have a big book of Heaney's poems in my bathroom and I have come back to this one again and again. It actually involves a character named "Michael" but that is not why I chose it. I'm not sure people will "get it" since I don't really get it myself. No matter, though. It just feels right.

I have taken to wearing a coin around my neck as a reminder of mortality. I can hope, though it is doubtful, that if I were found dead somewhere, the coin could be taken off the chain and put in my mouth to pay the ferry for my trip to Hades or the Eleusian fields or the summerlands, or wherever it is Hermes cares to guide my soul. If nothing else it would be a mark of finality, like the placement of a period at the end of a long and meandering sentence. The day before Mike died, the coin broke off the chain. I should get it fixed.

A Kite for Michael and Christopher

All through that Sunday afternoon
a kite flew above Sunday,
a tightened drumhead, an armful of blown chaff.

I’d seen it grey and slippy in the making,
I’d tapped it when it dried out white and stiff,
I’d tied the bows of newspaper
along its six-foot tail.

But now it was far up like a small black lark
and now it dragged as if the bellied string
were a wet rope hauled upon
to lift a shoal.

My friend says that the human soul
is about the weight of a snipe,
yet the soul at anchor there,
the string that sags and ascends,
weigh like a furrow assumed into the heavens.

Before the kite plunges down into the wood
and this line goes useless
take in your two hands, boys, and feel
the strumming, rooted, long-tailed pull of grief.
You were born fit for it.
Stand in here in front of me
and take the strain.