October is Sterling's month

October is Sterling's month. His death
has a date, around October 11, but
you can't fix it so completely because
the dieing happened on a Friday nite
at 6 o'clock in the evening, to the effect
that when the time creeps up on you
the days of the weekend don't fall each year
at precisely the official calendar date.
There's no way around this expansive blur
of the timing one direction or another
most years.

But in any case, the annual remembrance
must be planned for, plotted -
as, if not faced consciously, it will rise
like a secret tide of mooded illness of spirit,
of soul sickness. But if faced, it can be
prepared and practiced as a liturgy
of conscious remembrance of Sterling's dieing
and of Sterling's living.

Nature herself usually takes the first step
toward preparation and remembrance.
The autumnal signs, the semiosis of the wind
and cold and turning of leaves, even ever so
infinitesimally, now play like a piano-man
on my very bones, and I can hear
the slow rising tide of the blues.
The remembrance of Sterling's death is coming,
all the October signs tell me.

October belongs to Sterling.
October is a season of my heart, flooded
and, swimmingly, I'm loaded to the gills
with Sterling. I swim in the slowly rising tide,
and recall the steps of the liturgy
for this moment of my personal liturgical year.

October is Sterling's month.