—for Betty Wall, Dec 25, 1918 to Jan 30,1980
Betty, today you lost your footing
and you fell like a stone into the void
You took in the amniotic ocean
you, who never learned to swim,
you, who loved the sea,
Today, only the ocean
carries the clay chill of death
Only the ocean
is the spawning ground of death
Only the ocean that spawned life,
today, took back a life.
We swim in seminal fluid
We bathe in an amniotic bath
We are born in it
We run rivers to the sea
on a rip tide that churns to land.
We threw your ashes to the wind
from a clay pot that you made
back to the forest. In spring,
rhododendrons will bloom,
and we will pick huckleberries
when you return home,
2/2/1980, rev. 2016
added 10/16
mostly reconstructed from my journal notes, I later found the typed version, below.
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