Michael Ryan

In the summer of 1973, when I told Tom I had just found out I won the Yale Prize, he ran across the room, lifted me off my feet, and spun me around like we were dancers in Oklahoma!.  

In the summer of 1995, when Tom finished reading my autobiography, he said, "You're lucky not to be in rubber pajamas."

He had a rare talent for empathy fused with irony and his sweetness was boundless. He loved dumb humanity, struggling humanity, hapless humanity. People who couldn't help themselves but acted with good intentions. Driving from Warren Wilson to Ashville in my old 1978 red Fiat Spyder, top down (donchaknow), we saw spray-painted on a concrete bridge spanning the highway the shaky black letters that spelled, "I love you Sweatheart." For me it was an amusement, for Tom it was a poem.

Through the kindness of his wife, Jenny, I got to talk to Tom an hour before hospice service arrived. We actually made jokes. I said, in my unconvincing Jewish old lady accent, "We used to be quite the dancers"; we had often remarked what a miracle it was that we were still alive after our many youthful shenanigans (and worse). The last thing I said to him before goodbye was, "you made a lot of people happy in your life," and without missing a beat he said, "you made a lot of people happy too." He was unique—as a poet, a person, and a friend—the most relentlessly magnanimous person I've ever known. And he's right there in his poems, to visit whenever we want to. It's heartbreaking how alive they are. He had plenty of wrinkles, so there was no saccharine in him, but: What a sweatheart.

A man risked his life to write the words.
A man hung upside down (an idiot friend
holding his legs?) with spray paint
to write the words on a girder fifty feet above
a highway. And his beloved,
the next morning driving to work...?
His words are not (meant to be) so unique.
Does she recognize his handwriting?
Did he hint to her at her doorstep the night before
of "something special, darling, tomorrow"?
And did he call her at work
expecting her to faint with delight
at his celebration of her, his passion, his risk?
She will know I love her now,
the world will know my love for her!
A man risked his life to write the words.
Love is like this at the bone, we hope, love
is like this, Sweatheart, all sore and dumb
and dangerous, ignited, blessed—always,
regardless, no exceptions,
always in blazing matters like these: blessed.

 

 

 

from Split Horizon, Houghton Mifflin Compay, 1994