![\"Stockhausen\"](\"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/170\/2016\/01\/Stockhausen.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cStock\u201d \u00a0 – \u00a0August 27, 1949 \u2013 January 12, 2016<\/p>\n
Someone, last January, introduced me to today\u2019s \u00a0Mary Oliver poem, \u201cWhen Death Comes.” \u00a0 Her language engaged the shock of his dying, when many of Stock\u2019s soul friends had been confident that he was growing through his bone marrow transplant back into the trim and vital man we knew. \u00a0 Within our shock there also lived the intimate grace of Stock\u2019s way of living; \u00a0Mary Oliver\u2019s words gets that too. \u00a0 I find graceful remembering and tender affection more accessible this one year since the shock hit in January 2016. \u00a0 \u00a0Mary Oliver\u2019s expression \u201ceach body a lion of courage\u201d helps me find my way to Gerry today. \u00a0 That, and the poem\u2019s last line \u2018\u2019I don\u2019t want to end up simply having visited this world.\u201d \u00a0Stock, \u00a0I miss your face, and your voice, your eyes, your puns; you were not a visitor in this world, you were a presence.<\/p>\n
Best to read the poem out loud, with pauses. \u00a0 Have a blest day.<\/p>\n
love,<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
john sj<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s Post \u00a0– \u00a0\u201cWhen Death Comes\u201d<\/p>\n
When death comes
\nlike the hungry bear in autumn;
\nwhen death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse<\/p>\n
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
\nwhen death comes
\nlike the measle-pox<\/p>\n
when death comes
\nlike an iceberg between the shoulder blades,<\/p>\n
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
\nwhat is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?<\/p>\n
And therefore I look upon everything
\nas a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
\nand I look upon time as no more than an idea,
\nand I consider eternity as another possibility,<\/p>\n
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
\nas a field daisy, and as singular,<\/p>\n
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
\ntending,\u00a0as all music does, toward silence,<\/p>\n
and each body a lion of courage, and something
\nprecious to the earth.<\/p>\n
When it\u2019s over, I want to say:\u00a0 all my life
\nI was a bride married to amazement.
\nI was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.<\/p>\n
When it\u2019s over, I don\u2019t want to wonder
\nif I have made of my life something particular, and real.
\nI don\u2019t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
\nor full of argument.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t want to end up simply having visited this world.<\/p>\n
Mary Oliver \u00a0\u00a0New and Selected Poems, Vol.1<\/u><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Thursday, \u00a0January 12 \u00a0 \u2013 “I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular,” \u201cStock\u201d \u00a0 – \u00a0August 27, 1949 \u2013 January 12, 2016 Someone, last January, introduced me to today\u2019s \u00a0Mary … Continue reading