We met at a Compassionate Friends gathering— a once weekly session for parents who had lost children to death. The year was 2000. Her daughter had been five years old when the child´s father accidentally ran her over in the driveway. My daughter Naomi had died, age nineteen, in 1999 after a two year struggle with cancer.
The group formed a small circle of perhaps six or seven people, with some occasionally dropping away and new parents arriving. We all carried the sadness of the greatest loss.
I did not know then that our paths would eventually merge many years later. And now, in 2026, as I write an autobiography, I recall how fate wove the fabric of our lives into a single cloth.
I live in Mexico now, but my friend still lives in Santa Fe, where I lived for over forty years. We remain Facebook friends, and when I could no longer recall certain details from an important time we spent together in Italy and India, we spoke over the phone.
Through those conversations I have been able to gather the important strands of our shared experiences and shape them into scenes that now belong to the epic prose poem I am writing, The Canticle of the Wanderer. The work is now nearly 50,000 words in length and about three-quarters complete. A typical published poetry collection is often only 5,000 to 15,000 words.
The poem has crossed from expression into world-building—a lifetime’s evolving consciousness given form.
Perhaps I am simply an aging artist attempting to gather the scattered fragments of an entire life into one coherent song before time disappears.
The writing is in the third person. The Holy Bible is a primary influence, shaping both the sound of the language and the intent of the heart.
Eventually, the work will appear on Substack, available by subscription. Contact me for more information.
Here is a recent canto honoring the time my friend and I traveled together. This follows a previous canto describing our meeting in Italy.
The Canticle of the Mother River and the Sacrifice of Light
Being the Record of the Burning Shore, the Ash of the Innocent, and the Salmon Shroud
I
They left the land of composed memory, where stone is disciplined into beauty;
And stepped into the city of the three million, where the senses find no shield.
The cool silence of the sestiere exchanged for the roar of the ancient hive;
Where dung and incense, refuse and roses, are woven in a seamless garment.
II
Crossing at the cusp of Diwali, when ten thousand lamps defy the darkness of the world;
Each small flame an act of defiance against chaos and death and the ignorance of the age.
The marigolds floated upon the river and were worn as garlands around the necks of the faithful;
Fireworks blasted so loud that the very heavens seemed to answer with their own thunder.
III
At the height of the day, when the sun stood sentinel over the river, the companion knelt;
Clad in a sari of the bazaar, she fashioned a design of colored powders and flowers upon the roof.
A quiet offering for Lakshmi, laid upon the tile to welcome beauty and blessing into the house;
While below, the Ganges shimmered in the heat, holding the twin mysteries of bather and pyre.
IV
From that hour, the keepers of the house and the men of the street looked upon her differently;
No longer a stranger passing through the dust, but a soul who had offered respect to the deep.
For the people of the river recognize the heart that bows before their ancient mysteries;
And the gates of the city opened wider for those who brought flowers to the threshold.
V
Each morning before the dawn he went to the foot of Assi Ghat among the worshipers;
Where young men swung lamps and blew conch shells in the ceremony of the river's greeting.
Flames wheeled through the dawn while the Ganges gathered the prayers of the living and the dead;
And the sun rose over the opposite bank, casting its first light upon the bathers in the holy water.
VI
He raised his lens to a holy man and took the image without the asking of permission;
When he returned to the shelter, the pictures of the morning had vanished from the glass.
For in the city of Shiva, nothing is owned, and every image is but a borrowed shadow;
And he said: Lord, accept my loss as a sacrifice, a tithe paid to your holiness.
VII
Then came the night of the softly flowing mother, when they rowed upon the Ganges;
He and the companion Celeste, carrying the small vessel of a fifteen-year grief.
The ashes of the child, a daughter of five years, were released into the matrix of the water;
Mixing with the prayers of the living near the pyres that burn without end.
VIII
They stood as the Witness while the heavy weight of the departed was given to the river;
Watching the small leaf-boats of fire drift toward the sea like wandering stars.
In that place, the conversation between the dead and the living never falls into silence;
For the Ganges washes the sin from the mortal and sets the spirit free from the wheel.
IX
On the day that followed, the companion wrote the air with salmon-colored cloth;
She moved like a poem upon the high steps, an unfurling butterfly beneath the sun.
She lay down as a corpse in a shroud, then rose to fling the rose petals high;
Like teardrops of blood falling upon the stone, a sacred theater for the mesmerized eye.
X
He made friends with a young man who drove a rickshaw through sixteen hours of the day;
Supporting his wife and two boys by the labor of his legs and the strength of his back.
Yet always he greeted the traveler with a smile and looked him in the eye and asked:
Are you happy? — and the question rang in the chest long after the city had fallen behind.
XI
The marigolds gathered in heaps, and the thunder of the fireworks shook the earth;
Until the time of departure came, and the rickshaw moved toward the iron rails.
Celeste vanished into the distance, and the Wanderer turned his face toward the desert;
Where the camels gather in the dust of Pushkar, and the next portal waited to open.
