Vox Populi
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Byron Hoot: On That Day
In a few days, it will be the anniversary
of my father’s death and I will have
to see if grief visits or stays away.
So hard to know the swing of that pendulum,
what it collects in its arc, what it drops
as its rhythm increases or slows,
the forgotten remembered,
the remembered forgotten.
Now, over three decades since time nearly
stopped to hear Mom say on the phone,
“He’s gone.” I look at my hands and heart
and know that isn’t so. Already, I feel
I will need to dance with the bears
in that slow dance of life and love and death
where new steps are introduced flawlessly,
say, “Dad,” then his nickname, “Cub” –
the same nickname as my youngest son,
as though a name holds everything.
It is not yet the ninth of November
and I inhale the breath of life and death
and feel the urge to dance.
~~~~
Copyright 2025 Byron Hoot
Born and raised in Morgantown, West Virginia, Byron Hoot now lives alone in the wilds of Pennsylvania. His books include Setting Moon Morning Twilight: Predawn Meditations.
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Almost three decades with my mother gone. How I love this beautiful poem.
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Byron writes: “I’m overwhelmed and deeply moved by the responses. perhaps the gift of poetry — reaching perfect strangers and, in this case, receiving their responses. i am humbled by the graciousness of the comments. thank you, Michael, for posting the poem .”
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For some people when someone close dies it is a wake-up call that this unusual experience called death will someday happen to us too, but what is it? In this poem besides the fact that there is the experience of grief for the poet Byron Hoot, it seems he is also curious about a mystery it holds. His focus on what is the nature of remembering a loved one who has died implies the question asked by many humans, “Where do we go when we die? Do we go anywhere at all? His big question is, “how is the contemplation of the death of a loved one and it’s remembrance affect our view and our opinion of life?
Perhaps we can find some facts or evidence related to what could be an after-death existence or nonexistence if we observe carefully, as we have been taught in science classes? Such as when astronomers figure out the distance of the stars, like the Star Vega.
Astronomers have assigned Vega a brightness value, so they know how bright it is supposed to be, they refer to it as a standard value. They then look at other stars that seem to have the same brightness as Vega. If another star looks dimmer than Vega, then astronomers know it must be farther away. If it looks brighter then Vega, then it’s closer. There seems to be a similar intent in Byron Hoots Pendulum. He writes,
” In a few days, it will be the anniversary
of my father’s death and I will have
to see if grief visits or stays away
So hard to know the swing of that pendulum,
what it collects in its arc, what it drops
as its rhythm increases or slows…
He discusses grieving his father’s death, he says “Now, over three decades since time nearly stopped to hear Mom say on the phone, He’s gone.” But Hoot not only shows us the way in which he and his family remember his father, he is also studying himself; he is studying his mind. One can say his mind is studying itself, and how the death of his father has colored or continues to color his thoughts. While reading the poems the reader may also associate such thoughts as how does the experience of having/observing a loved one die, such as a parent, a child, a friend, or a leader, affect our definition and meaning of life?
Is this true for every human on the planet? For every human on the planet there is possibly at least one close person that has died, how has this experience influenced their philosophy of life. So that Hoot in a very detailed way is studying, in what way does the death of a loved one begin to influence or add to our definition of life and its meaning and mission. But Hoot is not contemplating this question dispassionately; he is doing so while he is immersed in the remembrance of his father’s death. It seems that it is in this time of remembrance, when he gets the closet view of how this death experience has entered in, and around and become a permanent part of his mind’s opinion on life. He has become very conscious of how this experience has progressively woven its way over, and around and within his thoughts. At the time of writing the poem it seems that his observations, and his experiment with the pendulum is the sharpest; this close observation comes to visit on one day, or once every year, for the last ten years. It is very much like an astronomer who waits patiently, for that one season when his star moves the closet to him/her, in order to study its illumination in greater detail.
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Thank you for this, Luz. There’s a great deal here to ponder.
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The dead are always with us in ways we never expected. This is a lovely tribute.
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Yes. Thank you, Mandy
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Yes. Thank you, Mandy.
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The dead are always with us in ways we never expected. This is a lovely tribute.
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And so many gone now who sometime appear out of contextual nowhere, the ghosts I never believed in now haunt me.
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yes, for me too.
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Right-on Laure-Anne!
And when I look at my hands, I, too, see my father’s hands. I’m believing I have his heart as well.
Today is a good day for poetry!
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I forgot to type the quotation marks. Apologies… So let me try again:
“So hard to know the swing of that pendulum,
what it collects in its arc, what it drops
as its rhythm increases or slows,
the forgotten remembered,
the remembered forgotten.”
How this moved me.
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So hard to know the swing of that pendulum,
what it collects in its arc, what it drops
as its rhythm increases or slows,
the forgotten remembered,
the remembered forgotten.
How this moved me…
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Yes, me too…
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