| Footprints 'All I know is something like a bird within her sang.' I look for her in the morning, the mockingbirds in her garden still asleep. She is not in the hall or lying by the rockingchair, watching daylight take the fences and the orange trees. Her leash is gone from the kitchen and her toys, so I go out. There's sourgrass by the corner; any dog would stop and sniff. Not there, so I drift a moment, over the freeway, to the bluffs where I used to watch her run. Look, footprints where the trail turns to sand and the salt smell of the sea comes up. Someone small has stopped here just to dance, and see how the tracks stop, as if she danced a little while, then flew off. |
| Poems in Memory of Stella Kyle Kimberlin |
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| Called Away "Every person gone has taken a stone to hold and catch the sun. The carving says, "Not here, but called away." -William Stafford I turn the morning over and over like a stone, the road ahead of us falling away into fog, though the day was clear. The sea hangs there, a plastic backdrop for the scene with boats painted on. Two months pass, the lilacs bloom and the mockingbirds come back, chatter and sing, swoop at trespassing swallows. I put your toys away, and learn that gravity gets worse, like weather. I will not forget the needles, the way you seemed to celebrate the lights, nor fail to thank God that my mother stood and turned away before the poor world made a last appeal for influence, and touched your face with death. June 8, 2000 Kyle Kimberlin |
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| STELLA'S GARDEN These eyes, like lamps whose wasting oil is spent, wax dim. Shakespeare, Henry VI Now somebody stand up, one of you teachers or priests, and tell us about the heaven of dogs, how they go joyously barking, beyond the powers of this present air. And in the yard where my Stella loves to run, one tree eloquently offers oranges, as cherry guavas glisten and we are all alive. That tree will not mourn, nor do the bushes dream of a coming loss, so let this place absorb my grief in the consolation of hummingbirds. Where do good dogs go? Don't tell me they're waiting, searching for their masters in some lonesome spirit world, until they hear us call them home again. There must be a happy, sunny beach, with little waves singing or a warm field beyond the terrors of traffic, where biscuits flow from the hand of Grace. Now in Stella's garden, the single dove is splashing in her concrete bath, the fragile ficus leans sadly into forever again, as the implacable darkness falls. Kyle Kimberlin 1997 |
| She died on a Saturday morning, , as we held her. It did not rain, was not cloudy or clear, nor did the sun especially shine. The world withheld everything; the people and their traffic faded away. The sea kept its distance, gray and calm. I do not remember birds, or what if anything we ate that day. I remember the doctor's white coat, the poster of puppies on the wall. I remember my tears of boiled seawater, her bright blind eyes, uplifted to the lights. She was quickly gone. Six months have passed. spring and summer and the month-old autumn brings no hope of storms. I want to argue with thunder, spit in the face of the rain, tell the puddles they are full of death. But what if she's watching from heaven? She faced it all with a smile, and loved us to the quick bitter end. Kyle Kimberlin Fall, 2000 |