Title: What Have I Ever Lost By Dying
Author: Robert Bly

Prose Poem by Jeremiah Schaffer Gould

"I lie alone in my bed; cooking and stories are over at last, and some peace comes. And what did I do today? I wrote down some thoughts on sacrifice that other people had, but couldn't relate them to my own life." -From "Eleven O'clock at Night"

The pages shuffle together like a flock of birds. The man whose name floats in the cloud shrouded midnight of my memory beckons me and I follow, slow and awkward as if just awoken from a slumber. It is a scrapbook of memories . . . a literary collection of images and moments pressed into the spaces of the pages, like flowers, leaves, caterpillars, stumps, a chunk of amethyst, bled with their skeletons black on the off white fibers - I want to perform an archeological study on it, to section off my easy chair and dig deep into the crevices printed into the paper. Bly would sit with me, dig with me, into the exotic world found in backyards and back bays, letting salamanders pray on our hands, examining herons "like some old Hittite empire, all the brutality forgotten, only the rare vases left . . ." - From "An Excursion on Tomales Bay."

During class, walking through the grass, at the bus stop, in my bed curled like an acorn nut waiting amid dried leaves in autumn, these pages keeping my heart warm with the burning coals of the images, carrying conversation with the honest voice from a journal passed through generations. A companion to muse with, to observe with, to walk winding roads and trip over stones with . . . there are no places too secret, no moments too mundane, for honesty shares all sunrises and sunsets.

The book sings . . . the book moans . . . the book stutters . . . the poems flutter as live winged insects pinned and waiting for a creased, ink stained hand to let them free. They clap as they are read, they beat their hands together as they flutter away. Here or there, one might fall, his wings too thin and weak from captivity. "Warmed, he grows lively, pulls himself out, and falls to earth, where he raises his chin defiantly. I pick him up again. But he is patient." - From "Finding a Salamander on Inverness Ridge."