This is essentially a long letter to my father Allan A. Kuusisto. Allan has been gone for nearly 15 years. He died without warning on Easter Sunday just after walking his black Labrador. He fell dead in the hallway outside his apartment from massive heart failure. He died as some say they’d like to die: no frightful diagnosis, no lingering, withering battle. There’s much to be said for this view of dying but I’m certain my father wouldn’t have agreed because he was a stoic Finn who would have fought to the last and found poetry in the fight.
Dear Allan: There’s a lot on my mind. Your favorite American poet was Galway Kinnell. Galway died two weeks ago. You once said to me as we walked the shore of Seneca Lake in Geneva, New York: “Galway is both sentimental and tough. I like that.” You thought of Kinnell as an honorary Finn.
Here is a poem by Kinnell you loved:
Saint Francis And The Sow
The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath
them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.
You especially loved the lines: though sometimes it is necessary/to reteach a thing its loveliness…
**
There is a lot on my mind that brings me to my father.
Though I’m trying to abjure sentimentality I must admit its better side—the courteous and kind nature of our emotions. My father could be courteous and kind, qualities that stood him well in his career as he was a college president in the late 60’s and throughout the 70’s.
When students at the State University of New York at Albany occupied the administration building, he didn’t call security; didn’t send a corporate lawyer to meet them; but instead crossed everything off his calendar and sat down with them. He sat with them for three full days. He turned the protest into a seminar. He negotiated but also taught. He listened without any pretense he was too busy to hear their concerns.
Here’s a photo from that time. Allan K is at the lower right. He’s holding his reading glasses in his right hand, and talking directly with students. The year was 1969. Notice the absence of security officers.
Dear Allan: It seems today’s college Presidents are often less interested in the kind of direct relationship with students that you cultivated. I think senior academic officers nowadays are afraid of almost everything—frightened about the bottom line; afraid of their donors; eager to slash services and programs without genuine transparency; and perhaps worst of all—like the last Emperor of China they’re hidden behind layers of bureaucrats.
Dear Allan: I’m not sentimentalizing you. You had your weaknesses. You were often kinder to other people’s children than your own. But jeez, you were raised by a Lutheran minister during the depression. You shoveled railway tracks as a teenager. What the hell do I know?
Here’s a poem I wrote for you, though you died before the book appeared:
Viaticum
1
The Tao of walking, say, the American roadside,
Though it won’t be leisure brings you out.
It’s money that walks us through the beach grass.
There are broken devices here…
2
When he was a boy
My father shoveled railway tracks.
Later he called it misery mud —
A good word in Finnish.
The funny thing was, he’d say,
I used to shovel up people’s teeth.
And I mean regularly.
Excerpt From: Stephen Kuusisto. “Only Bread, Only Light.” iBooks. https://itun.es/us/1017I.l
**
Dear Dad: The spruce is bluer than twilight, takes blue far with prescience, as trees do
though saying it gets us thrown out of class, as I was, back when, back when the smart tree
took me in, bluer than a small boy’s blue which was blue enough, sweet as his blind fingers,
for the tree was sweet as well as wise and as I say, took me in, just as trees do, as trees will sometimes do and for nothing.
Dear Dad: they told me to draw with crayons, a skier, and I drew the tree.
Thanks for your blue, far with prescience. I hope the smart tree has taken you in. I hope Galway is there.
Yours,
The Kid
Planet of the Blind 