I'd Like to Say What the River Says

I walk into Dave's personal library and turn on the light. The first title my eyes fall upon is Roberto Bolano's Last Evenings on Earth.

The last time I saw Dave was his last evening on Earth.

For the past seven years, I have watched over his grown, autistic son while he and his wife went to the movies and eventually joined a bowling league. When Dave and I were first introduced, we talked about Autism and how his son omits helping verbs when he speaks. His son's name is Yuri--named after the physicist-poet in Doctor Zhivago.

When they left Yuri with me for the first time, Yuri was quiet, but blatant, about not wanting me in his sitting room.

So I explored.

That is, I explored until I came to a large room completely lined with books. And not just any dime-a-dozen thriller, but shelves and shelves of poetry, the classics, architecture, memoirs, and philosophy.

Later that evening, I learned that the library was Dave's. That the desk inundated with yellow legal pads of handwritten poetry were Dave's.

That he loved Richard Hugo and William Stafford. It was in Dave's library that I charmed upon Stafford's poem that resonates has resonated with me for so many years:

THE DAY MILLICENT FOUND THE WORLD

Ever morning Millicent ventured farther

into the woods. At first she stayed

near light, the edge where bushes grew, where

her way back appeared in glimpses among

dark trunks behind her. Then by farther paths

or openings where giant pines had fallen

she explored ever deeper into the dim

interior, until one she stood under a great

dome among columns, the heart of the forest, and knew:

Lost. She had achieved a mysterious world

where any direction would yield only surprise.

And now not only the giant trees were strange

but the ground under her feet had a velvet nearness;

intricate lines on bark wove messages all

around her. Long strokes of golden sunlight

shifted over her feet and hands. She felt

caught up and breathing in a great powerful embrace.

A birdcall wandered forth at leisurely intervals

from an opening to her right: "Come away, come away."

Never before had she let herself realize

that she was part of the world and that it would follow

wherever she went. She was part of its breath.

Aunt Dolbee called her back that time, a high

voice tapering faintly among the farthest trees,

"Milli-cent! Milli-cent!" And that time she returned,

but slowly, her dress fluttering along pressing

back branches, her feet stirring up the dark smell

of moss, and her face floating forward, a stranger's

face now, with a new depth in it, into the light.

******

Dave is gone.

I explore deeper into Dave's library, my fingers stroking the spines of old and contemporary titles. I pull William Stafford's book Passwords from the shelf to find Millicent and sit down at Dave's desk for the first time. Coincidentally, there are post-its of passwords all over Dave's desk, as his wife has been attempting to continue his business without him. I open the mysterious world of the book and was surprised to discover--written on its blank pages--letters Dave had written to his other son and daughter. Sam and Katie are both younger than Yuri but are living out their lives outside Pennsylvania.

Next to a page labeled "4 Elegies":

"12/23/98

Dear Sam,

I look (slowly?) at the sky. I shake my head, and (how/now) out my hands. I don't understand. But I love you so much. You will never know how much. And I can't reconcile that right now."

And then I flip the page:

"12/23/98

Dear Katie,

Every place you go, I'll be there. The places we know together--will make our private meeting (statues?) and when there, and you need me, you go there, and I will be there.

The other places you'll go to that we don't know together--when you get to it, let me know, just say, 'I'm here, Dad' and I'll come. I will always be here for you. I promise."

I cried in my intrusion of such intimacy. I cried for the younger Dave, unreconciled, already elegizing himself. Soft spoken, always talking with his eyes to the ceiling, Dave was thoughtful with his words. How delicately he told me his marriage-story. He married his wife only a few months after meeting her. They married on Halloween, but went to McDonald's before the wedding because he was hungry.

So hungry.

An MFA graduate from the University of Pittsburgh, he was always a man brimming, hungry with questions and words too plenty for just margins and black pages in poetry books. His yellow legal pads, full. His shelves, full. His desk, his heart, his love, full. He sculpted--his statuettes and figures adorning his office. He owned a salt-water pool, golden retrievers, a prius, several office building in town, my attention.

But I'll admit, I learned more about him whilst creeping his library--more so than through interaction.

His newsboys caps, unworn.

His cookie jar, still full.

His slippers, unworn.

His stationery bike, motionless.

His baseball glove, stiff with the rigor mortis of gone.

I open one more book, another by Stafford. The margin, as usual, possesses his scribbles and musings near a poem.

"I will listen to what you say.

You and I can turn and look

at the silent river and wait. We know

the current is there, hidden, and there

are comings and goings from miles away

that hold the stillness exactly before us.

What the river says, that is what I say.

-William Stafford

The scribbles in his books, the scratches on his legal pads, they beckon me to come away, come away. I go deeper, my fingers feeling his writing, closing my eyes and feeling them like engravings in trees. I let myself gasp or cry when necessary, in the solitude of his library. But Yuri may beckon me and I will soon be going home.

It was in his home that I learned my aunt had passed away from ALS. It was in his home that I learned my sister had passed away from cancer. It was in his home, on his final night, when he came home early and shot the breeze with me. He asked how I was, knowing of my depression. I told him I was okay. I told him how the evening went. That Yuri ate his food. That Yuri spent most of the evening in his bedroom watching the same scene from "ER" over, and over, and over.

I learned early the next morning that he drew himself a bath. And that while peacefully bathing, a blood-clot--unrelated to his cancer, unrelated to his treatment--had killed him. His body, peaceful in the still-warm water, quiet.