For Stacy
My dear girl,
I don’t know any prayers for the dead.
I can only burn the cedar wood
as the arbor vitae is engulfed in the last light,
then blow out the candles,
exhaling your name.
Osiris resisted you once before
as you were lying intubated
and mummified after your accident,
but now he sucks the lime
and bleeds green for you.
Sweet stalks of wheat
line your vessel for the other side.
Moss roses crown your curls.
The Mourning Cloak butterfly,
in clinging ink shadows,
falls from its fluttering sky
as I place loosestrife
and hyssop
and the last of the warm day
lilies by your pink bauble face,
kissing you good-bye.
Stacy Welch, aka Trixie, died in her sleep at her home this week. She was 37.
ReplyDeleteTrixie was a tough chick, a bad girl poet on the MySpace scene. She had suffered multiple injuries as result of a car accident she had while driving intoxicated a few years back, and was lucky to survive that. She continued to have health problems which seemed to be worsening lately and had just recently been released from the hospital for some surgery. Her death wasn't a huge shock, but when I learned of it, via Facebook, I sat at my desk and cried and cried. She was someone that I felt I might meet someday. She was often raunchy and sometimes offended people, but she always had kind (occasionally off the wall) and smart comments to make on my writing.
I felt the need to honor her with a poem offering. I feel blessed and grateful to have known her.
Oh I'm sorry.
ReplyDeleteYour poem celebration of Stacy is beautiful. Sweet stalks of wheat line your vessel . . . and I suddenly knew that never will I want a casket, but only stalks of wheat before I am burned.
It's good you honored your friend. May she travel well on your words, as I have.
Yikes - such a loss. Trixie was a hot-burning candle, her damage was great, it gave her voice such sulphur to it, and though it's no surprise she's gone, I'd always hoped she find the wombs inside her wounds. Your elegy has all the floral gentleness many of us sensed was there insider her though her throat was wound with so many thorns. Fine elegy, and thanks for the pix of Trix too.
ReplyDeletei'm sorry your friend is gone but i am glad she burned so brightly.
ReplyDeletei don't know what to say. you don't know any prayers for the dead, so let's pray instead for the living.
(your language, as always, is so you infused. i love it.)
xo
erin
So beautiful:)
ReplyDeleteSuch a beautiful poem, so sad and sweet.
ReplyDeleteP M F