Dying Wiser #__: A Principle of Being
Wisdom through Poetry; Eldering through Dad: The only through-line he has
It’s the last post of the month. So, another Dad post written at some point late in the Fall of 2022. It was during a time and series of posts (here, here and here), where the season itself, as the evident life in nature all around us, and on our property, was beginning to shut down, die off, go dormant in preparation for winter. At the time, I was making strong connections between what I was seeing in Dad, and what I was seeing in nature. At the time this was written, Dad was already deep into his Winter. We just didn’t know how far; and we didn’t know he had no more Springs coming.
So why wasn’t this post sent earlier? I cannot remember the exact reason, but life and the present circumstances in that life, mine and my Dad’s, often got in the way making new posts more relevant.
So, you’re getting this one now as we enter into the latter stages of the summer of ‘23. Remember, for the posts drafted before Dad died, I’m publishing them unedited and unrevised—heck this one didn’t even have a completed title because at the time, I didn’t know where in the Dying Wiser series it was going to fall. It will be late Fall again, soon enough. So, may we all take a great look around at the life that is still thriving among us. Because, soon enough, it won’t.
Dad’s didn’t.
Do you have a Principle of Being?
Far be it for me to be so pretentious as to say you should….
But you should.
The Layers
~ Stanley Kunitz
I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.
About “The Layers” Stanley Kunitz has said, “I wrote ‘The Layers’ in my late seventies to conclude a collection of sixty years of my poetry. Through the years I had endured the loss of several of my dearest friends…. I felt I was near the end of a phase in my life and in my work. The poem began with two lines that came to me in a dream, spoken out of a dark cloud: ‘Live in the layers, / not on the litter.’”
(Poets.org, 2022)
The 2000 United States’ Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winning Stanley Kunitz lived to be 101 years old.
Those two lines Kunitz says were his inspiration, that came to him in a dream…. Do you recognize what he’s talking about?
“Live in the layers, / not on the litter.”
I’m choosing to imagine he’s metaphorically talking about leaves. Specifically, the leaves of Autumn that have fallen from the trees (I know, I know: more Autumn, more trees, more leaves! But this isn’t my motivation for today’s post so…hang in there with me a bit.) Oddly, the accumulation of leaves at the base of trees is called “leaf litter.” But it’s far from litter aka garbage or cat. Do you know what leaf litter does? It’s a strong argument for keeping leaves around instead of raking them up, bagging them, or sending them to the dump or corporate yard-waste sites.
Leaf litter is the nutrient-rich detritus, formally known as green leaves, that serve multiple functions and benefits for trees, soil, seedlings, and wildlife. In a forest, take away leaf litter, and you won’t have a forest for long.
For Kunitz, just as with nature, the good that comes from leaf litter, the “place of action and benefit,” is not on top of the pile where one is exposed to the elements, but rather amidst the layers. This is where the engine of decomposition resides with the end goals being fertility, nutrients, compost, mulch, and protection. As Stephen Jenkinson says:
“Life does not feed life; life is on the receiving end of life, always. No, it’s death that feeds life. It’s the end of life that gives life a chance.”
There’s a lot in this poem we could talk about in relation to Dad’s Eldering. From the “milestones dwindling toward the horizon” (ie past accomplishments, roles, and identity) as he looks back upon his life’s accomplishments and transitions “before he can gather strength to proceed on his journey;” to the “manic dust of my friends, those who fell along the way,” when he hears word of more friends and family who have died as he is dying; were Dad an actual poet, I think he could have written “The Layers.” Instead, as I have said before, Dad doesn’t read poetry let along write it (I’ve given up hope, as we’ve moved him a few times now, of finding a long-lost chest of old letters and original poems of my Dad’s), so it’s up to us to imagine Dad’s own life as a poem all its own.
And it is. Because it is a phrase in the first stanza of “The Layers” that caught my eye, and prompted this edition of Dying Wiser, that also surfaced the one, beautiful and poetic characteristic that will outlive my Dad.
I have walked through many lives, some of them my own, and I am not who I was, though some principle of being abides, from which I struggle not to stray.
“…though some principle of being / abides, from which I struggle / not to stray.”
Dad is nowhere near the person he was when he was younger. There is no sign of the son of a farmer riding his shetland pony; no sign of the adolescent who played basketball; no sign, sadly, of the dancer at whom others threw coins; no sign of the husband of 52 years; and no sign of the farmer…at all. If I weren’t his son, I wouldn’t recognize him as the same Wally from the past—in other words, if I didn’t know him at all, and looked at him for the first time now, and spent a day or more with him, I would not be able to accurately surmise anything about his past from who he is now. This is what dementia does; it robs one of their pasts leaving only this one singular “in the now” moment. All of who Dad was, as a pickup driving, hard-working, popeye-armed, barrel-chested, ox-strong, up-before-dawn-always, sole-focused, son of Moxee, hop farmer, all…gone.
Except with one exception—the one thing Dementia has not, and won’t, take from my Dad. And for that, we are eternally grateful.
So the line “principle of being” really stood out for me. As I asked myself what is the one “principle of being” that has been the through-line for Dad, linking all of Dad’s past lives, through to the present moment from which he still abides, and from which he isn’t struggling, actually, with the possibility of straying, my answer came quite quickly. Like I said, nothing exists in the current Dad from any of his past lives—not a single physical trait, or possession, or habit, or routine, or hobby, or ability. Nope—like an autumn tree, Dad’s been stripped of it all. Except for his principle of being.
The one through-line that has remained, Dad’s principle of being, is something that will live on as his brightest legacy. And if you know Dad at all, you, too, will know this to be true:
Dad’s Principle of Being???
—> the gentle Kindness that resides within his large and tender heart.
And just like the last line, Dad, too, is “not done with [his] changes.” Dementia is making sure of that and reminding us every day. But his kindness remains.
And did I say, for that, we are eternally grateful?
Yep, I did. And yep we are.
“How shall the heart be reconciled / to its feast of losses?”
The recent posts that have had a focus on autumn might have a dark feeling tone to them. We raised concepts like falling, and senescence, and dormancy, and hibernation, and winter, dying, and death. All things that of course happen in nature in autumn. These are among the most natural of things. But, you know what else happens during autumn, in nature?
Seeds get sown.
An apt metaphor for Dad’s Elderings.
“Seeds get sown.”
You already know that good farmers produce good crops; but great farmers produce great soil—so that the seeds, and roots, thrive.
If the soil was rich enough, from all the years’ end-of-Fall litter, then seeds thrive…
…for generations.
T minus ___
“Compost and dead plant material feed the next generation. The most important thing…
…is Love.”
If you are so inclined—from the great folks at Green Renaissance.