More Evidence of Eugene’s Brilliance

And so on. David James Duncan reminds me that when reading anything Eugene wrote, but especially Strychnine and Ceremony, it’s important to remember what Curtsinger’s imagination could do with a phrase from his beloved Meister Eckhart: “The greater the nudity, the greater the union.”

For us, as for Duncan, may any void in our life be filled with beings

like the lone female loon who mistook a wet, moonlit interstate for water and crash-landed on the truck-grooved pavement of the fast lane; loon to whom I sprinted, as a convoy of eighteen-wheelers roared toward her, throwing my coat over her head so she wouldn’t stab me, pulling her to my chest as I leapt from the concrete; loon who, when she felt this blind liftoff, let out

a full, far-northern tremolo that pierced, without stabbing,

my coat, ribs, heart, day, life. All is an Ocean, she

and Father Zossima and the avian choir keep

singing as into black holes in trees, truck

routes, river ice, frigid hearts, ecstatic

birds keep dropping. Till even alone

and in darkness, with no special

hat, clothes, or wings to help

me fly up and feel it, I find

myself caught in the

endless act

of being

loved.