San Gabriel Valley Poetry Quarterly

David Bortin
A RECIPE FOR ROSALEE 

Dear Rosalee,

I was there for your Mass at St. Gregory’s.
I could hear you laughing the entire hour.
Thanks. It helps to know you’re taking it so well. 

Now about your legacy:

I was too close to you, in life, to see the magic.
Your artistic radiance,
mastery of every medium and venue,
shone so bright I saw your merely mortal side.
Oh! So tragically mortal. 

Now, in the spiritual solitude of your absence,

I’m free to reminisce,
to peek behind the art you made
and see the art you were.
 
Your artist’s eye beheld the beauty and the meaning
in the fragments all about you
and within.
Your creations—all collages and mosaics,
jigsaws that never were before,
until you gave them life.
 
You specialized in word collages—poetry.
But I, and all you met, were fragments, too.
Not one for cybernetic shortcuts,
you networked wisely, the old-fashioned way.

You more than merely touched a thousand lives;
you nurtured and inspired us,
created links, communities, collages, metapoems.
 
As one stanza thus, I proudly bear the honor and the torch
from your creative spark.
Though I’ll falter, too, in time,
your flame burns on eternal; lights the way.
 
You won’t like this part (to poets it’s a crime),
but in conclusion, I’ll commit it one more time:
add a little pinch of tragic
to a cup or two of magic;
stir, and drink it down. To me, you are the rhyme.
 
Love,
 
David Bortin,
June 16, 2013