chain

I catch myself putting off reading the last of the unpublished poems in Bill Holm's posthumously released The Chain Letter of the Soul. And so sigh, and finish them. Maybe there will be more, later, poems or essays, squirreled away and brought to light, brushed up by his widow or a long-time editor. Or maybe not, this world being what it is, will maybe not find the money to put together more than one goodbye. Forcibly restrain myself from railing at the universe for its many specific examples of individuals I feel I could do very well without go on living into their late sixties and seventies and eighties while one man I very much would have preferred to still be here with us goes down at sixty-five. Pining for the deaths of others, however odious I might find them, just isn't on.

There's nothing for this. I decide that I will pick up another semi-secret project that went by the wayside during this king hell tornado of a year that's gone me by since Bill Holm died last February and try again to get inside of it, get myself mired in the center where there's no choice but to work my way out.

For it is life we want. We want the world, the whole beautiful world, alive—and we alive in it. That is the actual god we long for and seek, yet we have already found it, if we open our senses, our whole bodies, thus our souls. That is why I have written and intend to continue until someone among you takes up the happy work of keeping the chain letter of the soul moving along into whatever future will come.

—Bill Holm