in memory of robert creeley

i feel kind of stunned to have found out about his death
by accident - i saw a mention of him on a blog and then
found in a comment that he had died today. then found that
he had died in odessa, texas. steve, you should write to us
about the reading you saw in paris.

i opened my creeley collected to a random page and got this one:

"Oh No

If you wander far enough
you will come to it
and when you get there
they will give you a place to sit

for yourself only, in a nice chair,
and all your friends will be there
with smiles on their faces
and they will likewise all have places."

i can't figure out how completely ironic this is - but am happy i fell onto it
for the strangeness, simplicity, ineffability, and balance -

his tricky, precise, thinking/feeling poems work themselves into your mind
and i know that for me they will keep coming back over and over again
even though he
"is beyond himself into the next
thing"