The first time I met Kandice, my mother and dad came home from the hospital with her, but before mom Sylvia would get out of the car with the new babe, someone, I think my grandmother, was instructed to get the camera. Hence the initial meeting was recorded on film.
Many years have passed since that day, but I still have a pleasant memory of it – my other sister, Shelley, and I giggling with excitement to meet the new little girl, who would become our playmate, our friend and a witness to our lives, as we are to hers.
Kandice has been waging a valiant battle with a debilitating and frustrating disease, a battle I can only imagine. She is still one of the most creative, kind and generous women on the planet, and I’m very proud to call her friend.
Her husband wrote this amazing poem about Kandice, and she has given me permission to share it here.
for kandice
a man climbs to the highest ridge of the mountain,
and stares
astonished.
at the highest tree .
only this tree has survived
the stingy soil
the blasting wind.
and lightning has struck.
only here
only the rarest tree,
cleaving, gut-wrenching the trunk
with the explosion of rapidly expanding essence.
does this tree fathom its own beauty
razor-silhouetted on the heights ridge
absent the bland symmetry of its crouching neighbors
recording the constant insult of gales and bolts in seared bark and half-dead branches?
once upon a time a spore caught in a rocky cranny,
a sapling struggled to life.
the highest tree would have chosen some safer berth in the lower loam,
no doubt.
but choiceless, it carves itself alone against the high sky
indifferent to any notion of picturesque valor
visited only by the highest climber.
steven taft, december 24, 2007
marsylsfolkstories 