A Memorial Reading for Ed Galing
By Alan Catlin
The last Sunday of the year is the
traditional poetry service at the Schenectady Unitarian Universalist
church. I signed up at the last possible moment this year and faced a
dilemma as to what to read. As I told the congregation, when you
have tens of thousands of poems choosing one that was appropriate is
extremely difficult. Generally, when I don’t know what to read, I
read the last piece I wrote which was to be a poem as epistle, in
memory of Ed Galing, who had recently died. As with others of my
correspondence friends, a letter poem seems the most appropriate way
of paying tribute; addressing the person directly as if writing a
letter they would actually read. Every year, on vacation, I write a
post card to Dave Church from Block island, as I did when he was
alive. I see no reason to discontinue the practice now that he is no
longer here to read it. He is alive to me in my heart and always
will be, as will Ed.
The problem was, my last poem was not
finished yet; his passing is still too new for the kind of distance
needed to write the kind of poem he deserves. Instead I tried to find
a piece that Ed would approve of. As I said to the congregation, Ed
was a simple man, a humble man, who wrote up until the day he died.
Apparently that included letters to many he felt closest too knowing
the end was near. I wrote back to Ed right away, after receiving my
last from him, thinking you never knew which letter would be the last
one. Ed was 96 after all, the poetic grandfather I had never known.
As I pointed out with reference to the previous reader , who read a
poem by Wordsworth’s ships passing in the night, our letters
crossed in the mail.
Ed embodied the virtues that I
consider the most important in a man: he loved simply and well,
especially his family, his beloved wife, Esther, to whom he was
married for 67 years and whose death he never recovered from. He
knew poverty but it his spirit knew great riches and with that in
mind I read the following poem dedicated to Ed Galing 96.
Love in a Time of War
You can see them, the pregnant women,
the nursing mothers,
the lovers holding hands
Their ears wired for sound, one
thousand songs for liquid days,
a herald angel’s apocalyptic ode
And for some, the bombs are falling
now, all the highways are
mined, the mangled fields are as
unsafe as any road
The bombs falling are an aphrodisiac,
the shock and awe of love
among the ruins; all their exposed
flesh burned where it is
touched
Even when the war is ten thousand
miles away
Ten thousand miles or five thousand,
it makes no difference, war
is simply something just beyond the
horizon and love is what
happens right here
Right here where the black hawks are
flying, where the bombs are
smart, the missiles guided,
precision piloted reminding us it
is not so much how the bombs are
directed but where they land
And who they land on that matters,
distance is a factor in a time of war
In a time when we have come to love
the bomb more than we love our
fellow man, more than we love
ourselves
Maybe, what we know is not love at
all but something more primitive,
something bestial and impure
Something that causes us to believe
that we are no longer descended from
Angels, unless the angels are the
exterminating ones, the kind that
fly on the wings of stealth bombers
that inflict their death, unseen,
from above
Consider what they have wrought;
consider the light from burning cities as a
celestial event, a fireworks
display, a celebration for the dead, for love
in a time of war
Love in a time of war is all we have.
Cherish it.
****Alan Catlin has published well over sixty chapbooks and full length books of both prose and poetry.
****Alan Catlin has published well over sixty chapbooks and full length books of both prose and poetry.
