This is The Thing

I wrote this poem about my old friend Kevin Rues, who passed away this Spring.

Puer Aeternis

In Memory of Kevin Rues (11/21/1951 – 5/12/2010)

I don’t mean it

as some shrink would.

You would never fit

inside a pronouncement

of pathology.

I mean to speak as Ovid:

To praise your grasp

on your own unendingness.

You moved as Iacchus

in my life

piping me away

from drab midwestern ways

to ritual bonfires

sacred orgies

the brink

of my own continent.

Yet you always seemed

to be looking away

at something else.

“Just a little

out of grasp”

as Michael says….

which is, I suppose,

the nature of god-head.

You stand in my memory

in this statued pose:

weight on one leg

a hip curving gracefully away

the hands at rest.

Yes.

In ivory

which I can imagine

you loving

or hating.

You surely went on.

Time must have touched

your laughing face

sculpting

the lesson-plan

the light bill

the too-late call

from the too-young boyfriend

into folds around

those marble-bright eyes.

I know you went on.

I heard report

of your revels

from your own mouth

and later

from the mouths of others.

These, too,

are myths, though,

when all is said

and done.

You might have gone on.

Perhaps you became

your own Silenus

by the end

grew rounder

and grizzled

and taught your

soon-to-be-reborn self

how to trample the grape.

But I will never know.

The world must do

without you now.

But I have you

safely carved into

this figurine

which I can imagine

you loving

or hating.

Copyright 2010 Carol L. Steinel

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