I've been back from the funeral for a couple of hours now. It was about four hours each way; Bill Carpenter drove and I rode shotgun. There's a lot I might say; I'll just say it was a grace to be there. And I met Tim's old hunting buddy Steve Syrdal as well as Fr. Rob and some of Tim's family.
This poem, framed and in beautiful calligraphy, was on the table that displayed Tim's photograph and his books and was printed in the order of service.
Razing the Woodlot (for Vincent R. Murphy)
Here stands the grove our tenant plans to fell.
The homesteaders who planted this tree claim
fled North Dakota when the Dust Bowl came.
Their foursquare farmhouse is a roofless shell;
their tended shelterbelt, a den for fox
and dumpground for machinery and rocks.
The woodlot seeds its pigweed in our loam,
and windstorms topple poplars on the field;
but for a few wasted acres' yield
we'll spare the vixen and her cubs their home
and leave unburied these decaying beams
to teach us the temerity of dreams.
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