Sorrow

     I cut someone loose from my life today.  In Malcolm Lowry's brilliant and stunningly bitter "Under The Volcano", the protagonist has a picture on his wall of a giant rock split by a fire.  It is titled "The Parting".  The author speculates on how, even if the rock was bolted back together, the very molecules that  made it are forever changed and it will never be single again. 
   While being depressed, I thought of this:

Trees

I think that I shall never see

A poem as lovely as a tree

A tree whose hungry mouth is pressed

Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,

And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear,

A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain,

Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me, 

But only God can make a tree.

                                                                                                        Joyce Kilmer

     Sgt. Kilmer was killed in the Argonne by a sniper as he lifted his head to reconnoiter.  He was in the company of Wild Bill Donovan when he died.  The English version of this is the death of Saki, whose last words were "Put out that bloody cigarette".  (Both men repeatedly refused a commission).

     I am so sad today.

Kilmer died here.

Joyce Kilmer

July 30 1918