The rain is ashes...

While waiting on a lunch date, I decided to check my email and read about the passing of a friend, Dean Chambers.

The email read:
HEY GUYS I HOPE ALL IS WELL. JUST WANNA TOUCH BASE WITH YOU TO SAY ANOTHER FRIEND HAS BEEN CALLED HOME. I WASNT THINKING BOUT TELLING YOU GUYS CAUSE SO MUCH HAS BEEN GOING ON. SOME OF YOU KNOW HIM HIS NAME IS DEAN CHAMBERS. HE WAS CALLED HOME ON SUNDAY MOTHERS DAY IN L. A. DEAN MOVED BACK TO LA SOMETIME LAST YEAR I BELIEVE. HE ALSO HELPED OUT WITH THE FALLTACULAR YOU GUYS HAVE.

THE FUNERAL WILL BE NEXT TUES 5/18 2PM

Then, while patrolling the blogs, I read about the suicide of another friend, Jameel Smith.
Read Keith’s touching words at http://www.keithdjones.net.

My heart is broken for both losses. I have no words that can adequately express my shock and empathy for those who are hurting now but the poem Hum by Ann Lauterbach gives voice to the multitude of emotions I feel tonight.

Hum
by Ann Lauterbach


The days are beautiful
The days are beautiful.

I know what days are.
The other is weather.

I know what weather is.
The days are beautiful.

Things are incidental.
Someone is weeping.

I weep for the incidental.
The days are beautiful.

Where is tomorrow?
Everyone will weep.

Tomorrow was yesterday.
The days are beautiful.

Tomorrow was yesterday.
Today is weather.

The sound of the weather
Is everyone weeping.

Everyone is incidental.
Everyone weeps.

The tears of today
Will put out tomorrow.

The rain is ashes.
The days are beautiful.

The rain falls down.
The sound is falling.

The sky is a cloud.
The days are beautiful.

The sky is dust.
The weather is yesterday.

The weather is yesterday.
The sound is weeping.

What is this dust?
The weather is nothing.

The days are beautiful.
The towers are yesterday.

The towers are incidental.
What are these ashes?

Here is the hate
That does not travel.

Here is the robe
That smells of the night

Here are the words
Retired to their books

Here are the stones
Loosed from their settings

Here is the bridge
Over the water

Here is the place
Where the sun came up

Here is a season
Dry in the fireplace.

Here are the ashes.
The days are beautiful.