Nada Gordon relates a comment made about my father's death to the death of Robert Creeley. please excuse the smell of self advertisement here. Nada's words are apt, and that's why I write this. death is natural, as she writes. which is the crazy part about the Schiavo tug of war. in the Christian view of her proponents, Jesus' loving embrace awaits. yet the defense of her life is timor mortis. the sad thing is that stiff impervious sesne of fundament. but death is natural! we meet something unimaginable in death as well. just before my father died I sent to my brothers a picture I took around Christmastime. a lucky, lovely shot of my father sitting at the table. he looked with it, with the firm qualities I remember still apparent. the person lost in time, that was not the only father I had, tho at the end that is mostly what one saw. he's not to be at this table anymore, except as we might bring his image back in conversation. it's hard to wrap around that at times, as natural as his dying was. and Robert Creeley's gone? I've related my brief meeting with Creeley. it was just a moment, and I've offered it as a humble humourous glimpse, of me as well as him. some of Creeley's work has taught me keen lessons, some has angered me that I cannot fathom its reputed import or beauty, some has bored me. he did his work, and I did my work trying to engage it. there is no loss for me with his death, as his writing, all I really knew of him, remains. the influence of his writing resides in me, I couldn't eradicate that if I tried. what I can carry of Creeley is right here. I shan't hear again how my father met and talked with Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller at a Gene Krupa show. what I carry of my father is right here. I sound like someone who can't get past the news, but that's not so. I'm just trying to see the spectrum, and how the spectrum merges into white.