FOR
MY OL'BUDDY WARREN Sept.
2nd was a dark day for me, because that day, my old and dearest
friend was stolen out of this foul world by two of our ancient enemies:
cancer and death. Warren had been doing fairly well against that thing
that was eating away at his esophagus. The chemo had been working, his
strength returning, and he even posted us a picture of himself captioned,
“Look Ma, No Walker!” My
shutter-bug daughter Lisa had accompanied us on that last visit, and
she noted not just our amazing camaraderie but that we both had on identical
red padded shirts. I regretted having to say farewell then, because
I had an uneasy feeling that that just might be the last time I'd see
Warren. It was. I
was fishing on the morning of Sept. 2nd, 2020, when I noticed
something quite odd: a lone seagull of the kind that saved the Mormons
from the locusts. Franklin gulls usually travel in flocks, but this
one was way, way up riding a strong north wind due south. I thought
of Warren, seeing that gull, and heard a few days later that Sept. 2nd
was the day he “died.” My poetic imagination has convinced
me that that white gull was guiding Warren's soul to John Keats' “Warm
South” A perfect clime where pain and grief and strife are quite
unknown; a place “where all the folk are gloriously alive./
And summer lingers and the bison thrive... A place “Peopled by
shapes too bright to see?/ Who walk upon the sea/ And chant melodiously” A
few days ago I held my own little private ceremony for “my ol'
buddy, Warren.” He hated religion, (thought it separated people),
and he wasn't that fond of funerals either, unless they were the kind
where folks just share good memories of the departed and perhaps drink
a toast or two to celebrate their memory. I
had begged some of Warren's ashes from his wife Mary, and was trying
to decide where I might sprinkle them, when a neat thought hit me about
a time when both of us had raved about how much we loved Robert Frost's
great poem, “Birches.” That talk had inspired me to plant
a white birch in my back yard. (It
has taken forty years for that birch to reach swing ability. Birches
don't grow well in clay.) Under it, near Warrens ashes, there should
be a little plaque or stone which reads, “I'd like to go by
swinging a birch tree,/ And climb black branches up snow-white trunk/
Toward Heaven till the tree could bear no more/ Then set me down…”
I remembered from our boyhood that Warren, a natural gymnast, was
the only kid I knew who might have been able to “swing”
a birch perfectly on the first try. And he' could have climbed those
black branches hand-over-hand. Now
I'll have to depend upon the roots of that tree carrying Warren's spirit
up to the highest bough where golden leaves release him in a burst of
sunshine. And I'm believing that white birch-tree when all is said and
done will set him dancing on a Heavenly hill. You're
right, Robert Frost, “One could do worse than be a swinger of
birches.
edited html update 08-16-2021
Adios and Farewell
So I had hopes I might soon be able to visit him again in Sauk Center
Minnesota, --if that damnable virus afflicting the world would let up.
and allow another visit “just like old times.” Our last
get-together before the cancer diagnosis had been such a banquet of
shared recollections of fishing and hunting trips, parties, and old
friends remembered, great outings; How did that great old Byron poems
go? “So we'll go no more a'roving/ So late into the night/ Though
the heart be just as loving/ And the moon be just as bright/
Yes, we two back in our Camelot days often “heard the chimes at
midnight.” Our dialogue became so animated, in fact, that our
wine glasses both sat there almost untouched for most of two hours of
the kind of joy and laughter true friendships are built on.
Gene Pinkney - 11/23/20 -
For the Daily News
