Stoic delicacy

Hiroshi Sugimoto, from the Seascapes series

Creeper

With what stoic delicacy does

Virginia creeper let go:

the feeblest tug brings down

a sheaf of leaves kite-high,

as if to say, To live is good

but not to live–to be pulled down

with scarce a ripping sound,

still flourishing, still

stretching toward the sun–

is good also, all photosynthesis

abandoned, quite quits. Next spring

the hairy rootlets left unpulled

snake out a leafy afterlife

up that same smooth-barked oak.

John Updike

Lily's grandfather died yesterday, with the same stoic delicacy described in this poem. And I still see him breathing life into her–the same love of music, the same quiet strength. I wish they could have had more time together, to do all the things they loved to do together–baking bread, playing the piano, harvesting vegetables in the garden. He was a good person, and I have lost my second father. For me, from now on spring will always be tinged with a sense of desolation and sorrow of loss. Something has gone out of the landscape forever.