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      July 15, 2021To Eron on Her 32nd BirthdaySam Hamill

      When the last shadow
      of the forest vanishes
      under the broad wings
      of the last river falcon,
      I will be alone again.
      All the rain forests,
      the endangered species and
      flora and fauna
      bearing testimony found
      in hydrocarbons of stone …
      going, going, gone.
      Thus all our good intentions
      are moving along—
      their going is our going,
      each bound to the other by
      shared impermanence.
      There’s nothing that’s not Nature.
      And yet we are moved
      almost to tears by the thought
      of the last salmon or whale,
      last wolf in the wild,
      last California condor.
      With a veil of tears
      we shroud the dead we’ve tortured,
      building great castles of sand.
      Here at Kage-an,
      we’ve golden and black bamboo,
      white blossoming moss,
      dark-leafed Japanese maple,
      irises just being born—
      emptiness in each,
      as in this transient world.
      Rexroth asked whether
      meaning has being. I ask
      how tall can the foxglove grow.
      How long can the crow
      strut his stuff, or the robin
      continue to sing
      the sun down under the earth?
      I want to live a moment
      in that song, to die
      in that moment afterward,
      when daylight has gone,
      the world embalmed with silence
      until the first marsh frog calls.
      How much grief can one
      life sustain?—ask the Rabbi
      of Auschwitz who died
      with his dignity intact,
      or ask Chuang Tzu who laughs
      loud at the question.
      “I am not ashamed,” Merwin
      wrote in a poem,
      “of the wren’s murders nor the
      badger’s dinners on which all
      worldly good depends.”
      Apologies to the slug
      dissolving slowly
      in the garden, and to the
      mosquito thoughtlessly slapped;
      and praise to the rice,
      praise to the wine and to songs
      that follow after;
      and praise for our suffering
      which ennobles all our joys.
      I have no wisdom
      to offer on your birthday,
      but here is a song
      to celebrate emptiness,
      to celebrate years to come.
      When I come at last
      to be a passing shadow,
      I’ll sound like a whale,
      and plunge deep into the past.
      We are devoid, Hayden says,
      of essences, thus
      neither young nor old, male nor
      female, flesh nor stone.
      Happy birthday, my dear one.
      What outlasts us is our love.

      from Issue #8 - Winter 1997

      Sam Hamill

      “I grew up on a ranch in Utah, a farm in Utah, and my old man, my adopted father, loved poetry. And he would sometimes recite poetry while he worked. And he would explain to me, the rhythm of the work would help you decide what poem to sort of say. The way you sometimes hum or sing when you work—well, he recited poetry that way, and I think that was what first turned me on to poetry.”

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