Though we will never know the exact day, thirty-five years ago somewhere around this time of the year, my good friend Glenn Aron Hicklin went into the woods behind the family's hayfield barn and took his own life. He was 22 years old--about a month from his 23rd birthday. In the couple of years before his untimely death, he was very interested in becoming a knife maker. Like most of the things that he did, he went into knife making full bore. I do not know how many knives he made in the two or three year period that he worked at it, and I definitely do not know if he ever sold any. However, I do know that he often made mistakes in making a knife, and whenever he did make a mistake, he would give the knife to me.
In 1988 and 1989, Glenn gave me at least eight or nine knives, which he called his "mistakes." As far as I know, I still have all of them. I just don't know where all of them are. I found the three knives above that I placed in the shadow box three years ago in a cedar chest in my shop. The bottom of the chest had fallen out. The knive's handles were loose. The handle on the Bowie knife at the top was broken, and the metal on all of the knives were rusty and almost black from being dull. My friend and former student Zechariah Holmes is a great blacksmith, and one day, I saw him and asked him if he could restore and refurbish the knives for me. He looked at them and said he would be proud to do so. Yesterday, I finally put the restored and refurbished knives in a shadow box under glass after 35 years. Now, everyone can admire the works of my friend's hands that have not toiled on this Earth for 35 years. Glenn is gone, but not forgotten.
In honor of this day and the dedication of the knives, I would like to revisit a poem that I wrote so long ago three days after Glenn's funeral. I had not revised the poem since I wrote it. To me, it was untouchable. However, since the Glenn's knives can be restored and refurbished, I thought, "Why not restore and refurbish the poem too?" So I did. Here it is. At the end of my poem is a song that Glenn wrote. It was written in 1986 and stuck in a my song and poem notebook from those days though I have no memory of him putting it in the notebook. ENJOY! Please let me know what you think of the poem and song and let me know if you have any memories of Glenn.
Funeral for a Friend
Part I.
Here on the strong and nestled hill
Where eternal winds blow,
But now are still,
I, within myself,
Am quaking in my soul
And acting with no will.
Part II.
No hush flows through the knitting pines,
No mirth fills the walnut's brevity,
No crackle ticks the oak tree’s tines,
No prickly gumball's break and fall,
No willow's tendrils wave and whine,
But silence spreads across them all.
Part III.
Leaden feet carry me to the door
Where I once called out to my friend
And never once was I before
So unwilling to cross that door
Or to hail the folks that sat within.
Part IV.
I must change now, for memory is strong,
And it seems I am part of someone’s bad dream.
A woman sits there who does not belong,
Her lips aquiver with a repressed scream.
The couch, where we for many years,
Watched Johnny Carson and Saturday Night Live,
Was covered black like convoluted biers.
Legs moved in dozy numbness lie a beehive
Dosed with drowsy smoke by its master.
I saw my reflection in the painting of praying hands.
I saw my shadow crawling on cracked plaster.
The clock, no longer counting time's tumbling sands
Had submitted to the wish of Joshua's hands.
I was a piece in this, yet not one of the parts.
Men joked about the prospects of a savior
Women suffered the hardness of their hearts,
Yet all knew they displayed proper behavior.
Without a doubt, everyone acted with good sense
While whirling in my mind with gods and demons.
I'm glad I’ve written these things in past tense.
I know no right or wrong within their reasons.
Their voices chopped in fan blades that cooled flushes
Of errant notions and bodies to hold.
Tickled hands drew from embarrassed brushes
For in embrace the thoughts were not so bold.
Part V.
His mother grabbed my hand and cried
And pulled me strongly to her breast.
For something we had shared had died,
But even now I must confess
That I had never called her mother,
Not one time in my life,
But it was well to call her Other
Since she is now Our Father's wife.
Part VI.
She collapsed within my arms with a dread I’d never felt.
Her cheeks warmed the collar of my shirt.
I could feel her heartbeat as we knelt
And prayed for Death to ease away this hurt.
The limestone of the fireplace blushed red,
A log lay in the dog-irons cold and black,
Her hands, clenching on my bare neck, bled,
The blood ran unimpaired all down my back.
She asked me for some peace with pleading eyes
And I, with a true heart, choked up and lied,
"When one of us passes, only a part of us dies"
But she did not believe, and later on she died.
Part VII.
I swear that those who die in us live on
And run and fight and love and procreate.
We throw angry threats at burdensome fate
Until, at last, we are done.
We are time, and we are timeless, and we wait.
We are all a part, and we are all one.
Part VIII.
The floor was bowed with weight and dust.
Empty hands gave emptier food, and hollow minds took bites.
Shallow souls gave sound advice that seemed so right and just,
But held no grace in hardened hearts as diamonds do with lights.
There was no more game, no more play, the dirt was on the grave,
The flowers were sent, and the passions were spent.
Time to collect the cold crockery and wave.
The proper behavior didn't even make a dent.
Part IX.
Now, I alone with just the two
Had no notion what I should do
Standing paralyzed with fear
As if I felt that God was near,
But I have heard no Holy Tongue
Nor song with angel’s voices sung.
I could not speak or make a sound
To bring the walls of heaven 'round.
For here was deep and dark despair
Which by no means could I repair.
I felt so near the gates of Hell,
That dumb was right and just as well.
Thus, with our reflection done,
There we stood all as one
With silent stares and sodden hearts
Feeling the loss of many parts.
Part X.
Here the bad dream ends, and new life begins
In long walks through scattered leaves and rocks.
Here we dwell in our passions and sins,
In our self-prisons of memory’s' locks.
I am the same, though tempered by time,
But several of the rest are gone,
But I remember through communal rhyme
While all the others went their ways alone.
I remain to give each day its glory,
To praise each setting of the ageless sun,
To hear birds sing, and then to tell the story
Of how the parts are still alive in one.
Part XI.
It was a sunny day, though no one knows,
When he decided life must end
And he believed, as the old saying goes,
That he had no future and no friend.
The evening light shined through dusky trees,
The birds and squirrels startled at his feet,
He said no prayer on his bended knees
But listened to his own broken heart's beat.
He smoked a joint and silently gave praise
To marijuana's gift of easing pain,
Then he put the loaded pistol to his face
And aimed the dark cold barrel at his brain.
The cracking of the pistol made deer start,
But they went back to caring for their young.
His faithful dog who followed would not part
And licked away the small blood with his tongue.
And there he lay all quiet in the wood
More peaceful than the act that he had done.
He sliced away the part he thought no good
And left no pieces here to soothe the one.
Part XII.
Some say that he was a father,
Some say that he was a child,
From what I know and what I gather,
His mind was a little too wild.
We cannot take nature and make a man,
No animal surprises us with reason,
No human law breaks the natural ban,
So we live in the throes of the season.
And his wasn’t summer or spring,
His wasn’t a bright Harvest moon.
He grew weary of this cyclical thing
And brought Winter on too soon.
We often play gods with Nature's parts
And regret the great harm that we've done,
But we seldom realize in our prideful hearts
That we cannot replace parts with the One.
Part XIII.
For his memory, I will now let him sing a song that he wrote in June of 1986 and stuffed into my notebook of songs and poems.
The stage is now yours Glenn Aron Hicklin 1966-1989.
Silence, Light, and Sound
When it all comes down from all around,
There is never enough silence, light, or sound.
It's always there never gone,
Always there never found
Sometimes I wonder where we are bound.
Coming fast and furious,
Dying slowly, steadily, surely, now.
Has it been here before or never again?
Experience it now, it's not a sin.
Noone knows where it has been.
Survived somehow it did, so right it is;
No doubt
Never enough silence, light, or sound.
Flowing over, under, around, beside,
It's will strikes constant, steady, strong,
In and between the right and wrong.
One way in no way out
Without a doubt.
No one here; we're all there then
With one way in not wanting out.
Begin anew four seasons to a year
Or one thought in time
All the time, never a rhyme,
To fall behind and hide.
So to what it is silence, light, or sound,
Sometimes I wonder where we are bound.
Comments