Grinding Stone
for Curtis Booth
Jupiter now is over
The garage’s peak beneath
The beech the neighbor
Has hired someone to cut down.
You disliked your neighbors.
The garlic flowered. We cut
The basil down and ground
It wood down into marble
With a heavy sound. Tim
It was with his fisherman’s
Forearms made the light work
And you with your direction.
Richard had died and Richie
And the summer flowered
With our celibacy and smoke.
You have died my dear friend.
Time turns backwards on those joys.
For Curtis Booth, Bookmaker and Calligrapher
Night listening to Guo Chuwang
“Moon Reflected on Er Quan”
Emperor’s Gold too dark, cold
Sorry to have missed you
After crossing the snowy mountains
Glad
to be from way out west
so I can say re Coalville
yeah that’s the next town up
towards Wyoming and mean it
and know it.
And though Peter Covino
has such nicely pressed shirts
and always a sharp haircut
last night we went up Millcreek
Canyon and broke sticks
with our hands and the help
of stream smooth granite boulders.
Pine smells good
when it burns.
Light fell over
red aspen leaves
and the dirt needed
no addendum.
Ate in the dark with a folding knife
blackened chilies corn and steaks
tasting of fall and pine smoke and
happiness is happiness.
Curtis Booth, former book editor of Otis Nebula, died in August hiking in the mountains above Salt Lake City. Curtis edited Sundin Richards’ The Hurricane Lamp, Richard Cronshey’s The Snow and The Snow, and my book, Good Eurydice. He was a gentleman of many talents and interests. He designed and printed numerous books, pamphlets, and broadsides, both as whimsies and as scholarly works. In his younger days, he studied Numic languages at the University of Utah and at the University of California, San Diego, producing a Shoshone dictionary and, in collaboration with Maurice Zigmond and Pam Munro, Kawaiisu: A Grammar and Dictionary with Texts, published by University of California Press. Leaving field linguistics in the late 70s, Curtis worked for decades as a technical writer in prominent Utah tech and aerospace companies. In part through his participation in the University of Utah’s Book Arts Program, he developed an enduring interest in letterpress printing and calligraphy. The son of an English teacher, he held copy editors and proofreaders in high esteem. Curtis was a handsome, funny bon vivant who loved history, language, and art. His interests ranged from Ornette Coleman to the Langobards. Though he esteemed the avant-garde, he was in his basement rock a son of the Wasatch Mountains. After reading through the manuscript of Good Eurydice, he surprised me by saying that his favorite poem in the book was “Glad,” a humble poem that barely survived the winnowing. It is a poem about hiking in Millcreek Canyon in the late summer, which is what Curtis was doing when he died. “Glad” is reprinted here along with two poems I wrote for Curtis — a short Tang-style poem I had been meaning to send him all year and an elegy written shortly after learning of his passing. He will be missed.
Andrew Haley’s poems and short stories have appeared in 15 Bytes, Window Cat, and other places. An essay of his was included in the critical anthology Till One Day the Sun Shall Shine More Brightly: The Poetry and Prose of Donald Revell (University of Michigan Press).
