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Only on a true return could you find that you'd never left
On the first of May, my mother told me about a poet who loved volcanoes and Persephone and had just disappeared on a small island in Japan. It was his passionate belief, she said, that poets should go to dangerous places and bring them back in writing; by the time she heard about him on the radio, he had been missing for three or four days, but they were still hoping that his story would end like one of hers, the goddess he cared so much about, and he would come back with pages like pomegranate seeds in his hands. My mother couldn't remember his name, so I looked him up. Craig Arnold. This afternoon, I found out he has been declared dead. Somewhere I hope someone who knew and loved him is writing him a poem in which Persephone and Pele and the kami of Kuchinoerabujima are listening to their praise singer, or making him into something that can slip into the earth's burning heart and back again. I don't have the right to. I just liked his words. The severed head of Orpheus kept on singing, afterward the way poets do.
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He reminds me, at least in this instance, very much of Billy Collins, whom I love because I find his poetry both beautiful and highly accessible.
I'm glad to have had Craig Arnold brought to my attention, but am sad that it had to be in this way. I hope that they keep looking for him! I hate the idea of 'presumed' dead. I wish they could find his body so that there can be true closure for his family. In the world of fantasy and movie scripts, I wish that he was actually alive, being tended by some kind hermitical Samaritan, and would emerge from the wilds one day, whole and well and bursting with fantastic stories to tell and poems to write.
I concur with others - if you are inspired to write a poem about him, you should do so. People have written poems for less reasons than this, and no one will write the poem that you will. If you do indeed 'owe' me a poem (which I don't think you do), this is the one that I would like to read. :-)
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Thank you . . . It is taken under consideration.