I Read William Bronk's Knowledge Of Plates To El For A Second Time, And Then … Poem by Dennis Ryan

Thursday morning, May 2, 2024 at 8: 14 a.m.; today, Saturday morning, May 18,2024 at 9: 29 a.m. and 10: 20 a.m.

"Earth and rocks of the earth used to be
our metaphor for unchanging—little we knew."
—William Bronk, "Knowledge Of Plates", from the poetry volume Manifest; And Furthermore (1987)

"Fate has led you to it,
you do what you have to do …"
—Sarah McLachlan, "Do What You Have To Do", from the studio album Surfacing (1997) , You Tube Music Video

Keep me ignorant, El, of time passing.
What used to be …. Just be you, just be you
in all your sweet goodness, beauty and charity.
Stay awhile … We want permanence and certainties.
Stay awhile … As if we could feel secure in some new archeology, some new archeology of knowledge. As if
we could feel secure in all that we desire. Some things
are very real, El, the grass, the trees, your eyes, mine,
the molecules and cells of which we are composed,
the blood coursing through our veins. Stay awhile.
(Facing, face to face, El—we want to be … are part of
a larger fairy take which cannot come true—the nostalgia
evoked by singer Lana Del Rey in "Summer Of Sadness",
and then me, trying to recapture my lost past. Facing …
north, northwest, in the direction of the Allegheny foothills
of southwest New York State, Olean, Bolivar and Wellsville.)
I want to finish here, but let me read on, if only for awhile:
"we may be nothing, and nothing lost when the end comes,
so all right, even so: we have to believe." Even so, Bill, he
believed; I believe in you, El. I have to—fate has led me
to it; I do what I have to do with varying degrees of self-awareness. Love is all that really matters in the end.
Thanks, El, for your loving care, for your concern,
your sweet charity, your caring for me in the end.