Violets, Venezuelan, Verse

It's funny the things you hold onto.

Almost forty years ago, this violet-sprigged cup was a gift from a happy, handsome, brilliant young man from Venezuela. We were college kids, young and in love, and oblivious to what the future held. College finished, we moved on, followed separate and different paths. Grew up. Years later, I was deeply saddened to hear of his tragic death -- a rock climbing accident in Yosemite, California. A young husband and father, a poet suddenly gone.

"... as I look at the snow,
color deep, as
I look at the crags, tracing ledges
and lines to the summits. As I

sing in these hills as if to echo
while the stars seem bent on fury,
and the air chatters with desires
only known to boys in winter,

and the stone below me beats a hollow laugh
that wills you frozen,
the fall in memory,
five feet above the granite."

Excerpt from "For TNR -- Dead On A Fall Off The Devil's Thumb, Alaska", Gustavo Brillembourg