Seeds of Edwin

I went to the cemetary this afternoon where my good friend Edwin Thomason is buried.

Edwin lived on my street when I was a child, and as a seven year old, I was convinced that his house was filled with magical properties; the wildly overgrown landscape provided my fertile imagination with seeds of strangeness. As the years would prove out, I wasn't far off because Edwin and his wife traveled in circles I couldn't conceive, and their home was filled with eclectic treasures brought back from their many extensive trips abroad.

Edwin loved his wife dearly; she was a beautiful woman, an opera singer who also taught piano. The day I audaciously climbed her apple tree, she came out with a bottle of castor oil and a spoon. "Here little girl, come take your medicine" she called out sweetly. Thinking she was a witch I ran like the wind, never to go back.

Years later, in the early 1990's when Edwin was Kean University's Poet Laureate, our paths crossed once again at a party I held in my own backyard. He was very kind to me and my sister; afterwards we enjoyed his company almost daily, reading, commenting and editing the many sonnets that flowed effortlessly from his magnificent mind. I was writing poetry during that time and with the utmost southern gentlemanly manners, he generously encouraged my meager attempts.

I spent many days in Fairview this past year, choosing burial plots for my sister and my family. I think Edwin is writing a sonnet for Whitney as I type this. He was a Leonine character, a majestic human being, unstoppable in his grace and creativity.


Poems With Edwin

Clustered and hidden under sun dappled leaves
The best - like deepening blackberries
Pearl seeded and flush -
Await a silken fingered brush.
Yet another, Edwin spies.
I watch, stained violet
through his blue rose eyes.


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