The choosing of these four poems to focus on was originally intended to be for a music project. Every now and then, I get it into my head that maybe I can go back to writing music instead of words, and am quickly disabused of the notion when I sit down to do so. These were to be the texts for four art songs in a collection also named “Seasons”. ↩
When its friends learned of its passing, many of us decided to memorialize it with poetry of our own. While I lack the feel, my attempt also incorporated the loss of breath: “Beneath that evening’s breeze the sickly sweet / and brazen scent of countless flow’rs / awoke inside of you a darkened sleep […] What hope have we who wait in life, who sit and pray and watch for your next breath? […] For we exhaled when you breathed in that breeze / and flowers wreathe your sleeping form.” Perhaps it is the cessation of the cyclical nature of breath that brings with it thoughts of death. ↩
+When its friends learned of its passing, many of us memorialized it with poetry of our own \parencite{memorial}. While I lack the feel, my attempt also incorporated the loss of breath: “Beneath that evening’s breeze the sickly sweet / and brazen scent of countless flow’rs / awoke inside of you a darkened sleep […] What hope have we who wait in life, who sit and pray and watch for your next breath? […] For we exhaled when you breathed in that breeze / and flowers wreathe your sleeping form.” Perhaps it is the cessation of the cyclical nature of breath that brings with it thoughts of death. ↩
After all, I was bound to Dwale; that’s why this essay exists. That’s why what little poetry I have exists. I could appreciate the music within poetry, but it wasn’t until I met Dwale, became bound to it in friendship, that was able to understand poetry better on its own terms. ↩