Preface to Ad Astra

Ad Astra (2019) comprises three elegies to three admirable men and close friends, whom we lost with several others in the months following the 2016 election. All three elegies were published in Goodbye Jersey Mud in 2019.

Below is the first of these; it also appears under a banner. It honors Jeff Gillenkirk, 67, an acclaimed Bay Area author and activist, who died suddenly on November 22, 2016.

— Braveheart

 (Jeff Gillenkirk, 1949-2016) 

Prelude

For you, Braveheart, clean-living,                

right-minded Bay Area lefty; 

a keen man on injustice                              

with trenchant voice and pen                 

and rising laugh contagious, 

but for that sudden-onset flash, 

and dark it was, here then gone,                  

a temper harboring, I thought, 

the DNA of some fearsome Scot          

heretic or pastor, Gillenkirk, your name,  

certain bane to wanton power, but no --    

"Gillenkirsch"-- you laughed my notion off,     

"a ruddy fellow or wild cherry tree 

or its vile cherry mash German brandy."                    

1

No wild cherry picking here:                    

your nick name, Lefty, for your nifty                       

jukes, left-right-left, the ball                            

equally at home in either hand                                        

for the drive-by or quick jumper.                 

The moves you put on Cuomo (Mario),

New York's governor in Albany,

who hated to lose at lunchtime hoops.              

Did he take your fakes? Did you shake him                 

off his mark, driving through the paint?     

Neither of you gave an inch,        

nor in his speeches did you flinch,              

drafting with left finger-rolls and spin,      

whistled out by his red pen.

2

Lefty, who would have known

you were born a righty              

in that downright upstate town;            

Irondequoit’s expatriate son,                 

our Benjamite southpaw in a fight,         

rallying our wavering pens,             

our colors bled and tattered                     

before the usual King's men. A man                 

for the right moment, a left moment,           

where the rights of left outs mattered,             

where words rang true and tyrants fell    

and books of course would sell. 

But never was the call rhetorical        

when your keyboard rang my bell.

3

You called it, Bitter Melon, your book of Locke    

with James Motlow, co-author and photographer

of the one surviving Chinese town                           

as no other in the Sacramento Delta;        

built by Chinese for Chinese on a bend               

by the slow green river, where you swam                       

and caught in their proud words 

the elders disappearing act.               

Is it ever past? you asked, the Driving Out,    

where white mobs sacked and burned   

coolie towns throughout the West?                      

Or the Chinese Exclusion Act of "82"

on the books until WW2, a fact we'd lost   

until this one went to press?    

4

Not the two "Lefty's" in the Baseball Hall of Fame,

Gomez and Grove, nor the marvelous O'Doul,          

nor three who only played one game,                 

but the lefties in your baseball novel, Home, Away: 

Jason, big-league southpaw and son Rafe                      

split by divorce, flash moods and trades,             

trials of the road and a fatherhood                                      

pitching through the separations and the pain              

of failing his troubled teen -- so Jason quits                   

to lose and find himself in Mexico                                        

while teaching Rafe to hit so well,                         

as fate will prove in this work of love,   

when they face each other at the plate                    

in the ultimate World Series game.                          

5

In Pursuit of Darkness you got it right:

vampires are what ails D. C.                                  

in this thirsty beltway thriller,

where Bram Stoker meets Roger Ailes               

as the head vamp, Jonathan Drees.            

Some real ones missed your casting call,        

and who believed the trumpery                        

entering stage-right? Not you, who cried             

"How're we going to live with this douchebag?"     

So you did not. Your final piece, "The New PTSD: 

Post-Trump-Stress Disorder," your case of it, 

two days out in print before you died,              

lights out on a city schoolroom floor,                       

answering the call to teach third grade.   

6

A Bach cello suite in G                               

swells the nave and rafters.             

Each speaker climbs the narrow stairs

to give their eulogies      

above a blur of upturned faces              

by your smiling photo on a chair.

I hear your laugh at night; it startles me,          

three rising notes in perfect key,                       

as if I were possessed, and may I be             

by what delighted you and what you left.      

And would it be right, Braveheart, if you did not             

cleave the air among us as I write,                            

fast-breaking down the court, driving                

(can you guess which way?)

and elevating for the shot?    

—<>—

(Ignore this system note here below; obviously it misleads — Ed.)