For Ben Hiatt

By Guest Poet A.D. Winans

Like a hummingbird feasting on

the pollen of life

You walked the streets like a Samurai

With words sharp as a sword

 

You lived your life like a chess master

Found peace in the mountains

But never forgot the life blood

Of the city

Ravaged by illness, you cut through

The pain with the precision 

Of a surgeon’s scalpel

Your spirit left behind

In the grass in the leaves

In the sky

Your words soft as feathers

Rode life to the end of the line

With metaphors that serenaded

The mind

Your memory dances with the wind

Becomes one with the stars

In a new place a new terrain

In the Buddha temple of life

All things die

But only the flesh expires

The spirit cannot be killed

Lives on in the heartbeat of the sun

In the words and friends who wait

To become one

© 2011 by A.D. Winans

All Rights Reserved

Photo Credits: Hummingbird © Larry Keller | Dreamstime.com and Samurai Grabbing Sword © Sean Pavone | Dreamstime.com

About Ben Hiatt (1943-2007)

Ben was a well-known Northern California poet, a larger-than-life character and one of the many people whose talent and passion for poetry provided a model for me in my early days as a poet. Learn more about him on Rattlesnake Press and on this tribute on Sacramento Poetry Center's blog.

Thanks to A.D. Winans, for permission to print this poem about his long-time fellow poet in honor of the upcoming publication of Ben's last manuscript in Primal Urge, including testimonials. Watch for it.

Great-Auntie Earth

You look so hunched and frail,

yet you have the strength 

to push a hundred.

You thought I was lost—

never met me 

beyond my mother’s belly—

but when I found all of you so many years later,

Your eyes danced love and sparkled recognition.

You were the link to all my good.

When they wouldn’t have understood, 

you took us in.

Your kindness imprinted me for the rest of my life.

Your influence was stronger 

than the word illegitimate.

“You’re the most generous woman I know,” 

my husband tells me.

No wonder.

Look at where I come from

how you welcomed me

and taught me

in utero

when I was still forming

to have an open heart.

Now we sit vigil while you make up your mind

to stay or to go—to cross worlds.

You’re an elf, but also an old Hungarian plough woman

muttering rosary prayers as she cuts through

the thickness of earth with all her might.

You are most God-fearing, but also the most God-loving,

woman I have ever known.

You blend fragile spirit with stubborn strength:

the kind it takes to push earth in its many forms,

and to keep on keeping on,

as we will keep on loving you,

pushing earth like you taught us well

with total generosity of spirit.

© 1999 - 2011 by Joyce Mason
All Rights Reserved
joycemason.com

~~~

Photo Credit: © Oksana Belodarova | Dreamstime.com