The Girl Who Used to Come Around Here

A Personal Eulogy

February 18, 2012

Have you seen that girl who used to come around here?

She ran with the wild dogs.

Hunted with them to fill their howling jowls.

Licked their wounds.

Do you know that girl?

No. She wasn’t your enemy. 
She didn’t have any.

Innocently, she saw the world and allowed it to be exactly what it was.

She was like the moon.

A loyal light in the darkness.

She was fun but not funny.

She was the one who politely asked you to consider the implications of your thoughts.

Even so, her mind rebelled against the so called saints.

But her heart knew something of the Gods.

You must remember her.

Every strand of her hair smelled of lavender.

In lue of an umbrella she carried her grandmother’s scarf.

She loved figs in the summer.

Persimmons in Autum.

Brussels-sprouts in Winter.

And wild grass in spring.

Often she would stand in the center of a field

And close her eyes to clearly hear and distinctly feel

Nature.

Have you seen her there?

Maybe not because the grass grew past her pony tail.

Or perhaps because she found it nice to lay on the grass

On top the watery earth.

She told me: it smelled different there.

And sometimes there, she could feel the whole love of the whole world.

She would stay there and pray for her clothes to soak up the water and the love.

Until shivering cold next to worms

With insects crawling in her hair.

Then she was soaked in her favorite things.

Have you seen her walking wet with mud, smiling?

She may have reminded you of young John Muir

With biscuits and a journal in her pockets.

She was that girl!

If you saw her you might think she lived in a timeless space,

Fully present in every timeless moment,

There, to offer every speck of herself to you.

And I believe she did.

There was no fear of death in her eyes, like most mortals have.

She was a beautiful arrangement of flesh and bones

With a peculiarly small shadow.

She was just herself.

Not selfish or self-proud.

She cooked most meals with rosemary and sage.

Do these recollections pertain to you?

Or am I the only one who remembers?

If you met her but once, you wouldn’t have forgotten her.

Because she was the girl whose spirit held yours and it was whole

She was like a teacher and a mother and a wizard.

Yet, she was just a girl.

Do you remember she who would sit there,

Reading a book

Or writing one.

She would lean over her cup of tea

And blow ripples on the surface

To cool it

And see the cosmos in her cup.

Did you ever sit down with her?

On a winter afternoon?

Even in a simple moment with her,

Even in the city,

In an instant you can feel like

You have journeyed to the underground crystal cave to taste the wonder of peace

And then when you return to touch the crisp air

You breathe warmth across the Earth.

With her, have you done that?

Or have you seen her when she starred at the day’s sky?

I imagine she was dreaming of being a tuna fish flying with a sparrow.

Yet I wonder was she dreaming the sky

Or was the sky dreaming her?

I remember how in love she was

With every day and every kind of life.

Then—I don’t know why this would come as a surprise—

But then, one day she fell into a different love

Unlike any that ever steeped in and out of her soul before.

It was with a particularly gentle human.

With him she learned love’s secrets.

On a July day she stood with him on the Russian River bed

In a single breath she vowed to be a wife and a mother.

Were you a witness there?

She married her Orpheus.

Together they battled Hades and won.

They lay down in the wild grass, soaked up love and rolled in mud.

They climbed the ice-capped mountains.

Canoed through vernal pools.

Scratched poetry on paper.

Sat down with the monks.

They ran across the world telling tales of fairness and love.

They rang gongs and sang prayers–for peace.

They patched and painted the holes in time and in the sky.

And their children joined them.

All the while, she combed their hairs,

Aloed their burns,

Washed their feet,

Mended their clothes.

Kissed their cheeks.

Have you seen her in her days of motherhood?

She gave her children what her parents gave her:

Freedom to take risks,

Encouragement to accomplish anything,

And lived the example of

Doing good,

Being True,

Loving hard,

And believing in better.

Sometimes I hear a voice say, “Find me.”

I know it’s her.

Where has she gone?

I must find her.

Eventually—or if she has not already,

She will meander the English countryside,

Sail the English Channel,

Cross over to glacier caves,

Then dig to another side of the Earth

Just to bump into a mustard bottle and decide upon another route.

Eventually, we may find her swimming in the sky

And riding horseback on the moon.

We may find her there.

     

Where ever she is, I know she is free.

Like a bubble,

A breeze.

Yes, that girl, who used to come around here.

I suppose I know where to find her.

If the body is a vessel for memories,

In my body, my memories hold her.

She’s a timeless being in me.

And your memory of me, and her in me, are also carried in you.

We all inherit her

An archetype, passed on to every generation to come from each of us.

She is part of this history and our future.

By being gone, we’ve come to the end.

She is here in me.

And in you.

And in that sky and rock and grass.

Here she is.