A blank slate

My mind feels kind of blank tonight.  Maybe it's the heat. It has been another hot and humid day here.  The heat index is ridiculous and will be worse tomorrow.  I don't know what people are doing without AC these days.  We didn't have it when I was a kid but would use floor fans and left doors and windows open.  But it is hotter than I remember it being back then. 

I left the island to go into the city for a meeting at noon.  It was hotter still in the city.  Ironically, in the 1800's, houses were built on the island where I live so that the city dwellers could escape the heat and get out into the country.  Not much escaping the heat over the last few weeks no matter where you are.

I stopped by the "ghost" bicycle memorial for E. after the meeting.  I wonder whether his wife and daughter pass this spot.  I wonder if the young woman who was driving the car with which he collided passes this way.  It felt surreal to see the marks in the pavement and to be at the spot where the accident occurred. 

His wife had posted a poem by Galway Kinnell that she wanted to be shared with E.'s rowing friends:

Those we love from the first

can't be put aside or forgotten,

after they die they still must be cried

out of existence, tears must make

their erratic runs down the face,

over the fullnesses, into

the craters, confirming,

the absent will not be present,

ever again. Then the lost one

can fling itself outward, its million

moments of presence can scatter

through consciousness freely, like snow

collected overnight on a spruce bough

that in midmorning bursts

into glittering dust in the sunshine.

I took a few photos, inscribed a message on the bike, and then left.  I felt as if I were trespassing in a way.  For a moment I couldn't see. Maybe it was the glittering dust that got in my eyes or just the brightness of the sun. 

The funeral is tomorrow. After that, I think that we will just go home and relax.  This will likely be a weekend on land.  I don't want to take the old dog out on the boat in this heat.  There is a good meeting on Saturday evening that we can both attend.  But basically we have no plans. The weekend is a blank slate as well.  Some how that seems like a good thing.