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In Memoriam: Paul Zimmer
Four poems from the San Diego Reader Poetry Editor
In Memoriam: Paul Zimmer
- I. The Visit
- For Paul and Suzanne Zimmer and Cele Wolf
- With sunlight pouring through the windows, March
- Retreats and winter’s windy shadows shake
- The shadows’ fruit from changing light. The lurch
- And sway of barren limbs (no leaves to speak
- Within the secret ear of spring) now cast
- Their shadows through the room. We visit there
- And lunch on whiskey’s fire – a sip, a taste,
- Enough to warm remembrance with desire.
- That afternoon your visit was a gift —
- To know that spring came early and put
- The bloom of meaning to books and birds.
- Our host, the town’s librarian, had laughed
- To think that here the dance of drink and thought
- Had found a way with words — a way to words.
- II. Soldiers Grove Stanza
- In Soldiers Grove, the Kickapoo has
- Entwined among its piney banks
- Both shady forms and greening mythos;
- Both take as motto: “Thanks–no thanks!”
- Where once the village taverns numbered
- In double-digits, floods encumbered
- The pour, and city fathers moved
- To move the village. Once approved
- The people cast their lot with science
- To capture solar-paneled fire
- On half a hill. Now higher and drier
- Than shining bottled self-reliance,
- Our thirsty tongues can yet recall
- How shadows made the sunlight fall…
- III. The Kickapoo
- For Bud and Katie
- A staked-out country rises up to stand
- With true inhabitants. The native state
- Of things is such that hope can immigrate
- From ignorance to undiscovered land—
- Beyond the claims that sinking fortunes spend
- On river silt. The hand imagines it
- Before the mind can hold its rich deposit,
- Or reckon miles of it by heart.
- The wind
- Can speak such fluid poetry. Its sound
- Can bend the Kickapoo with Jesuit
- Canoes. As chalice rests with calumet,
- A rambling river seeks to understand,
- Its shifting banks, bowed like divining rods,
- To tap into the common ground it floods.
- IV. Blessing for the House of Zimmer
- You were born of water’s hospitality
- And made your presence felt in all the corners
- That left the wintering shadows reeling.
- Not everything that falls to grave and floor
- Returns to dust — some things arise, sometimes
- Derived from sullen rains and salted fields,
- And ancient ways renew themselves, a floor,
- A foundation, wall and roof – a little bit
- Improves the lot and a bit of clearing waits
- For sunlight’s touch as gold that touches myth.
- Such is hunger, such is danger, such is greed.
- But Word and Meaning bear their child, A Gift—
- So three gods now come to introduce a hope:
- Where sunbirds sing, the rain won’t dare to speak.
Joseph O'Brien
Joseph O’Brien is the Poetry Editor for the San Diego Reader.
Here's something you might be interested in.
In Memoriam: Paul Zimmer
Four poems from the San Diego Reader Poetry Editor
In Memoriam: Paul Zimmer
Four poems from the San Diego Reader Poetry Editor
In Memoriam: Paul Zimmer
- I. The Visit
- For Paul and Suzanne Zimmer and Cele Wolf
- With sunlight pouring through the windows, March
- Retreats and winter’s windy shadows shake
- The shadows’ fruit from changing light. The lurch
- And sway of barren limbs (no leaves to speak
- Within the secret ear of spring) now cast
- Their shadows through the room. We visit there
- And lunch on whiskey’s fire – a sip, a taste,
- Enough to warm remembrance with desire.
- That afternoon your visit was a gift —
- To know that spring came early and put
- The bloom of meaning to books and birds.
- Our host, the town’s librarian, had laughed
- To think that here the dance of drink and thought
- Had found a way with words — a way to words.
- II. Soldiers Grove Stanza
- In Soldiers Grove, the Kickapoo has
- Entwined among its piney banks
- Both shady forms and greening mythos;
- Both take as motto: “Thanks–no thanks!”
- Where once the village taverns numbered
- In double-digits, floods encumbered
- The pour, and city fathers moved
- To move the village. Once approved
- The people cast their lot with science
- To capture solar-paneled fire
- On half a hill. Now higher and drier
- Than shining bottled self-reliance,
- Our thirsty tongues can yet recall
- How shadows made the sunlight fall…
- III. The Kickapoo
- For Bud and Katie
- A staked-out country rises up to stand
- With true inhabitants. The native state
- Of things is such that hope can immigrate
- From ignorance to undiscovered land—
- Beyond the claims that sinking fortunes spend
- On river silt. The hand imagines it
- Before the mind can hold its rich deposit,
- Or reckon miles of it by heart.
- The wind
- Can speak such fluid poetry. Its sound
- Can bend the Kickapoo with Jesuit
- Canoes. As chalice rests with calumet,
- A rambling river seeks to understand,
- Its shifting banks, bowed like divining rods,
- To tap into the common ground it floods.
- IV. Blessing for the House of Zimmer
- You were born of water’s hospitality
- And made your presence felt in all the corners
- That left the wintering shadows reeling.
- Not everything that falls to grave and floor
- Returns to dust — some things arise, sometimes
- Derived from sullen rains and salted fields,
- And ancient ways renew themselves, a floor,
- A foundation, wall and roof – a little bit
- Improves the lot and a bit of clearing waits
- For sunlight’s touch as gold that touches myth.
- Such is hunger, such is danger, such is greed.
- But Word and Meaning bear their child, A Gift—
- So three gods now come to introduce a hope:
- Where sunbirds sing, the rain won’t dare to speak.
Joseph O'Brien
Joseph O’Brien is the Poetry Editor for the San Diego Reader.
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