The first photo shows Walter breaking bread for breakfast in the flat we rented in Paris. Breakfast is baguette tradition, some chevre, Normandy butter, and a tangerine. Cafe au lait to come, in the nice little footed bowl. The second photo shows the locks of love mounted on the Pont des Arts, before everyone from all over the world started leaving locks, locks upon locks linked to locks, and the whole thing became too heavy and started peeling away from the bridge itself. Now the bridge is faced with thick pale green glass? or some kind of plastic? not unattractive, but nothing like the panoply of locks. Ours is the tiny black one at the upper left.
I have been working on a collection of my poems about Walter, sending it out to publishers. This week, The Beautiful Leaves was accepted by Bamboo Dart Press. They hope to have it printed by August 2023. The poems encompass Walter's aging and my grief about losing him. The poems themselves date from 2012 to 2022. I know that there is nothing new about loving someone who then dies, but I do believe that I have something unusual to say about that experience, namely, looking at the pain and the beauty directly of losing someone you have loved deeply and who loved you that way as well. I wrote these pieces partly to be honest about the horror and pity, but also to honor him as he deserved.
I had expected that getting the manuscript accepted would leave me joyous. This is not so. I have felt confused and weirdly relieved. I believe that, as glad as I always am when my work is appreciated by someone else, wrapping up this particular project means also wrapping up a chapter in my life. Ready or not, there it goes.
