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For
Donal Russell (1931-1994) Poet and Fly Fisherman
by Hank Dittmar
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From
news services: Washington Post, March 1994
Court
Asked to Allow Body to Be Skinned
SPRINGFIELD,
Ore. -- Donal Russell's last wish was to have his body skinned and
his hide tanned like leather. . . His will, signed Dec. 17. directed
that his body "be skinned from the head down and tanned for the
purpose of face binding volumes of my verse."
i
Testament
Cast
aside this muscle and fatty tissue.
Burn
the brain, the still chambers of the heart.
Reduce
the hundred bones to ash.
I
don't care -- they've done their part.
Skin
my hide, neck and torso,
limbs
also. Leathery already from sunny years
seeking
swift running trout streams --
tan
it all the way to taut and supple skin.
All
I know and much I can't fathom
is
in these verses. All that can persist
from
this brief tour is here in words.
Take
this human leather and bind these poems.
I
ask you my wife to carry out this task
for
I know my love lives on in you:
in
life my mate, in death
you
must be my publisher.
ii
Rachel's
Petition
Donal
Russell of Springfield, Oregon,
my
husband and proprietor of Russell's Bughouse:
a
shame we did not dwell in Japan,
where
doctors and museums vie
to
add tattooed skins to their collections.
In
this state laws against corpse abuse
cite
standards of the community.
Offending
community sensibilities -- isn't that
one
job of the poet?
Spurned
by the undertaker, that preparer
of
formaldehyde injections and gruesome cosmetic
alchemy,
whose delicate sensibilities
were
disturbed by this strange request,
I
am left with no recourse but the courts.
Judge,
as upholder of values,
you
are besieged by hate.
Can
you see the twists in my fly tying poet's
cast
at immortality, his longing for publication?
Over
the years together I collected the rejections,
kept
accounts and tended the back bar.
Together
we bore children,
tidings
good and bad and time.
Donal
put it all down in his verse.
Out
at the Bughouse, he was troop leader
of
beery expeditions and indulged scribe.
Here
before you are his friends, a community.
Snickering
a little, but still watching his back.
Judge
---- please grant my request
for
this purest form of vanity publishing.
Allow
the poet to cheat death
by bringing
out his hidebound verse.
iii
Judgment
Donal,
does it matter how trite your poems, how low you aimed?
It's
your try at transubstantiation, your grasp
for
the night blooming flower that holds me in thrall.
This
book of yours, is it meant for the altar, the library shelf,
or
the bathroom? Does it scream imprecations
or
leak subtle emanations? I want it to contain the musty
odor
of the forest floor, worms and sow bugs
working
under piney mulch, or the vibe
of
old, battered salmon bobbing in the shadows,
bulging
with young and tired of life. Donal,
does
your banshee wail come through in your unknown poetry
or
just in this perfect cry from beyond the passage?
Your
alchemy, does it turn corpse corruption into art?
I
fear it would merely graft slow putrefaction to the
mundane.
I
don't want to find out. That blind stab
across
the gulf from your cranky spirit to mine,
that's
enough for me. Bring on the tannic acid,
stretch
and scrape, pierce and sew.
Let's
bind your perfect words.
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