YAY! A new publication by Casey!

I went to get the mail about the time Nyel started dinner — twelve gorgeous clams brought to us by friends.  Gorgeous clams, cleaned and each in one piece.  Easy to believe they were dug that very morning.  They were beautiful.

The package, carefully rolled a bit to fit in our postbox, was from Stevenson, Washington.  I knew before I opened it that it was a new book of poetry from Casey.   I’ve been bugging him about publishing again — as I’m sure many folks have.  And I’ve been vaguely aware that he’s been doing so, by  ones and twos in poetry journals and publications that poetry neophytes like myself know little about.   A nest blew down is a collection of thirty-six of Casey’s poems and, of course, I choose to think that if I hadn’t been bugging him over the past few years it wouldn’t have happened.

I read them aloud as Nyel cooked.  Some were hard to think about.  No.  Make that all of them were.  They sounded like Casey — but Casey in later-than-midlife.  The time when looking ahead gets easier in some ways than looking back.  “Although austere in tone…” began the blurb on the back cover, written by Paulanne Petersen, Oregon Poet Laureate Emerita.  Hmmm.  I’m not sure that’s the descriptor I’d choose.  But, then, I’m not sure I have the right one, either.

And then, as the time to eat grew closer, I read Nyel’s name!  It was about halfway down the page in a poem titled “The guy who couldn’t see color.”  There is only one Nyel (at least for me).  And only one Casey who came to St. Vincent’s and managed to get into the ICU to see Nyel when the anesthesiologist halted his hip surgery because he was not doing well.  “Nyel might not walk again” begins the third stanza of Casey’s poem.

It’s really hard to eat clams through tears.  It’s really hard when you have to put hugging and visiting on hold.  It’s really hard to find a word that’s the opposite of austere to describe Casey’s work.  Especially when it comes to the poem that mentions Nyel.