Dear Oliver
First published in Kokako #33, September 2020, pages 64–65. Originally written on 24 November 2018 as an email sent to Oliver Schopfer, who lives in Geneva, Switzerland. The poem at the end also appears in our “Merging” rengay. This haibun is in memory of Darryl Ford, shown in a photo I took of him skiing at Timberline, Oregon in the summer of 1985 or 1986. + +
If I may, I’d like to share a personal connection I have with Geneva. My best friend’s brother died in a climbing accident on Mont Salève on 22 November—in 1986. And now more than thirty years have passed. I had encouraged Darryl to spend a year skiing in Europe, and he had decided to live in Geneva. He was Canadian, so he knew some French, but took language classes the year before he went. He died before the ski season started, on the slopes of the Salève. I was just thinking of him on the 22nd when I wrote to you, because I know you live in Geneva. I visited the city twice, in mid December of 1983, and again in January of 1984, when I myself was spending a month skiing in the Alps (Chamonix, Zermatt, Wengen, Grindelwald, Cervinia, several places around Innsbruck, and elsewhere—plus later in Scotland). It’s on my bucket list to visit Geneva again, and I would want to visit Darryl’s grave—not sure where it is, but I think in or near Collonges-sous-Salève. Just now I’m suddenly remembering the white birds gliding in the frigid water along the shore of Lake Geneva.
sparkling swans . . .
wisps of spray
from the Jet d’Eau
