"I wrote this poem after Anne Campbell died last October (2022) in which I recall my last meeting with her in her apartment after the condo she lived in was burned down. She kindly gave me a chapbook of hers "The Sound of Blue" as I had read it for her and given her some input."
gillian harding-russell
Mind music: for Anne Campbell
We met you in the foyer of a senior’s high rise
at the edge of winter prairie, flat white snow
interspersed with gold strands to the end of vision,
darkest brown eyes so alive darted towards me
above the black-satin mask, you eager to socialize
though clearly torn, and we’d postponed twice
due to a world epidemic and you immune
compromised. Your home burned in a fluke fire
so homeless you’d moved elsewhere with ‘voluble
though lovely’ youth at a previous apartment
before you settled here at the edge of quietude
We followed you by the coffee shop you described
as ‘a nice one,’ up an elevator
and down a dim beige corridor you had told us
you couldn’t walk after chemo, had to use
a wheelchair, and I felt the drudgery in that eternal
hallway you’d conquered and was now able to
walk on your own strength as we approached
your door and you unlocked it, sunshine pouring in
the tall window at a depth of sky on this upper story
at the top of the world, awakening blue solitary
and absorbing mesmerizing in its beauty
as a god that stepped down into the premises…
and suddenly I understood ‘the sound of blue’ *
as a celestial mind music from an eternal revolving, planets
with their moons around the stars
You served us strong black tea in good china (Irish
Breakfast Tea, you said) gingersnaps baked fresh
that morning at the ‘nice café,’ licorice allsorts
I remembered from childhood in a white bowl
while we talked for over an hour about books
and people you’d known during your life that crossed
generations, the former famous, writers and politicians
once ordinary folk, and Guy Vanderhaegue’s latest
epic tome, had I read it?