thisnewday

I took the day to compose myself, reading almost 100 pages of the book club selection, The Story of Arthur Truluv, by Elizabeth Berg. Which I feared might be a challenge too, since it involves an old man who visits his wife's grave every day, talks to her, even tries to know her neighbors. Some of which is familiar to me, although not all of it.

Finally, late in the evening, I picked up Moon Crossing Bridge in order to at least identify which poem of Gallagher's had touched me so deeply and had remained with me through these many years, albeit like random fragments of a lost manuscript.

But leafing quickly through the 60 poems which comprise her book, all of them written for her lost friend, lover, literary partner, I didn't find it. And I'm totally certain that I'd have recognized, it if I'd seen it.

What I did find, pressed between the pages in the latter part of the book, was a strange little flower, now quite dry, its color having bled out slightly onto the two facing pages of the book.

And now, besides the mystery of the poem that I can't find, I have the mystery of the flower to contemplate.

What is it, where did it come from, why is it in this book, what does it mean?

So many questions, like the ones of life and death framed by the two books delivered to me today, that I may never have answers for...

LPK
Dreamwidth
2.12.2019