by Sin Soracco and Patrick Marks
“Marilyn is gone”
Gate – gate — paragate – parasamgate –bodhi svaha!
Wednesday morning I heard Marilyn Buck had joined the ancestors. I lit a candle to light the path and set out a large wine glass of clear water for sustenance along the way.
We had started talking together about her poem—WOMAN WITH CAT AND IRIS– for the front of my book, I worried it would cause her trouble – she said: It’s important to stir the pot. Let’s do it.There are no wild iris along the river now, but next Spring when the blue flag come back I will remember her shining spirit, clear and true.
I saw a picture of Marilyn as a young woman not yet criminalized, sitting on the grass, long legs crossed. Wearing her favorite fancy ass boots.
In our letters we left our political concerns to the subtext; Marilyn liked birds so I told her stories about the young Osprey pair on the river, their first fledgling, a big fat female who Wouldn’t Shut Up: Feeeeeed me oh I so hungry, gimme fishie gimme fishie.
Marilyn described the flight of the geese over Dublin prison, heading out on their migration. The sound of their wings, their calls.
I filled a small bowl with wild white roses–five cream petals, yellow center. Wild, just growin out there, ramblin around all in the underbrush. The foundation roses. Marilyn’s a foundation rose? Looked for Wild Poppies for her too. Not enough sun here under the redwoods.
I set out a bowl of ice cream for her, scoop of rocky road, and one of mint chocolate chip. I don’t know if she liked ice cream. I do. I misst it while I was locked up.
They killed her. They fuckin killed her.
She won’t be a martyr, some packaged Suffering-Woman-Revolutionary-Hero. She was a friend. A poet. Courageous, clever, funny and kind.
That graceful bird has followed the wild geese.
Gone gone Gone beyond Gone beyond Beyond – all hail the goer.
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