For Mary Rudge Mary—can scarcely believe it. Just back from LA—would have liked to have told you about it. I lost my Catholicism so many years back, will never regain it but I would have gone to church with you. If anyone had power to bless… But you would not receive such praise We who are luminous I loved the hum of your voice the sweetness of your consciousness that found good in everyone are radiant And you were Irish Oh, Mary, named for the mother of heaven Stella maris, star of the sea, are 90 % light, how you loved ritual, color, dance how your words moved to the movement in homage to spirit inhabiting everything (as Pagan a thing as Christian) Flames loop and leap the arteries There is a core of ember in the womb —Can scarcely believe your vanishing beyond our brightness beyond anything I can know I remember your sweetness your love of art your passion for justice in the bodies of strong women reality and dream and memory with hard and thudding rhythms   of our love my love for you remains here, on this earth, under the deep sky of california passionate and lasting as the redwoods (like the one planted in 1980 by William Everson!) and wishing that I am terribly wrong about heaven about the afterlife so that you might live in all your dearness in a house that is on no corner of any earthly city— that you might have the mansion denied you in life [lines in italics from Mary Rudge’s book, Water Planet] —Jack Foley   For Mary Rudge Mistress Mary child of verse how did the curtain fall? With laurel crown on haloed hair and loving faces gathered around. Gentle Mary long endured brittle bones and heart. Mother Hubbard with a problem shoe fed her kids and filled the cupboard. Hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with thee. A lullaby from earth to heaven for the wee lamb blithe and spry.  —Clara Hsu   Photo by Dave Holt.