He Embraced the Void
by Job Conger
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Dennis Camp died
October 3, 2011.
It doesn’t matter how he died the outcome is the same
he’s GONE!
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What is there to say
when it’s too late to say goodbye?
His echoes linger louder
than his life.
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As a tenor in high school’s concert choir
after months of preparing
for the major concert of the year,
I was overwhelmingly sad
for hours after it was over.
The echoes lingered loud in my heart
and I could not let go of the bliss
from getting it all together right and sharing the music.
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For some, life is practice:
the striving for perfection
in life’s magnum opus,
the striving to see the vista
waiting over the horizon,
until the moments joyously come
and the last note of the last song is sung,
and the soul recognizes there will be no more concerts.
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Perhaps his secret miseries,
confounding his quest,
overcame him and he became –
like the family cat after eating tainted tuna –
determined to be the exemplar
who would not share his great distress,
who endured in silence
and succumbed to lethal solitude.
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Perhaps the man was smart
to terminate his misery
by terminating the source of it:
himself.
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Saying goodbye
to those he thought his friends
would have compounded his woe;
not lessened it.
No one would have understood.
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What is there to say
when it is time to say goodbye?
There was nothing to say.
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The moments remembered,
the echoes of his presence and words –
all generous gifts to the world –
he left behind
linger louder than his life today.
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The world did not understand
at the time,
did not care to understand
how we could save him
from us, from our incapacities
and from his.
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And so he is a memory,
alive in neither tumult nor peace.
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We turned a page in the newspaper
or read a post on the internet;
learned of his surrender
to the wordless, timeless, flavorless
void of eternity,
the destiny of all humanity.
He surrendered too soon,
too soon for us,
but not too soon
for Dennis Camp.
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written 7:15 am, Wednesday, October 19, 2011
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Dennis Camp was a friend who contributed more to my understanding and appreciation of legendary Springfield poet Vachel Lindsay than anyone else I ever conversed with about the poet. His death was unexpected, but as a former student of his, I had taken a class he taught about three Illinois poets (the other two were Carl Sandberg and Edgar Lee Masters) and I understand, more than I can explain, the outcome of his life.
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I am sharing this poem for the first time tonight at Robbie’s downtown. This will not be the last time I share this poem.
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Live long . . . . . . and proper.
