“Ascension” by Daniel ben Avrám

 

For Mary Rudge
by Jack Foley

Mary—can scarcely believe it.

Just back from LA—would have liked to  have told you about it.

I lost my Catholicism so many years back,

will never regain it

but I would have gone to church with you.

If anyone had power to bless…

But you would not receive such praise

We who are luminous

I loved the hum of your voice

the sweetness of your consciousness

that found good in everyone

are radiant

And you were Irish

Oh, Mary,

named for the mother of heaven

Stella maris, star of the sea,

are 90 % light,

how you loved ritual, color, dance

how your words

moved to the movement

in homage to spirit inhabiting everything

(as Pagan a thing as Christian)

Flames loop and leap the arteries

There is a core of ember in the womb

—Can scarcely believe your vanishing

beyond our brightness

beyond anything I can know

I remember your sweetness

your love of art

your passion for justice

in the bodies of strong women

reality and dream and memory

with hard and thudding rhythms of our love

my love for you remains

here, on this earth,

under the deep sky of California

passionate and lasting as the redwoods

(like the one planted in 1980 by William Everson!)

and wishing that I am terribly wrong

about heaven

about the afterlife

so that you

might live

in all your dearness

in a house

that is on no corner

of any earthly city—

that you might have

the mansion

denied you

in life

[lines in italics from Mary Rudge’s book, Water Planet]

Love,
Jack

Mary’s obituary in the Alamedan  *  Poet Laureate (from the Alamedan)
Mary penned poetry for Street Spirit