July 20, 2009
Curtain Call
For Bill Forbes 1959 to 2009
By Joy Snihur Wyatt Laking
Last night,
(Which for him was truly his last night),
We saw him on stage
Playing a rough, lazy, red-neck hick.
Playing him so convincingly,
We also saw his angst and foibles.
We saw his love of family.
We recognized our local characters,
But not ourselves.
Definitely not ourselves.
In today’s paper, the play’s director,
Writing about his sudden death,
Described him as very steady,
An unassuming guy;
Kind, gentle and friendly.
Is this the roll of an artist
To live all lives?
To explore what it feels
To be a womanizing lout,
While being respectful and reliable?
This was not a life cut short
By accident of crime.
Not even a life cut short
By natural causes.
This was life cut
By death at fifty.
Fifty is a reasonable age,
If any age is reasonable.
It’s the babies and twenty year olds,
Both on the cusp of life,
That we mourn.
This world still has countries
Where death at thirty-five is common,
And where artists do not
Write or paint or perform
Because they are
Labouring in fields,
Or languishing in prisons.
It is because I am fifty-nine
And also an artist,
That I feel his death keenly?
Or is it because
My life too may be cut,
Will be cut, by death,
Hopefully not this year.
Perhaps not next year,
With luck maybe not
For thirty-seven years.
But definitely, at some point,
Unplanned and inconvenient,
Or planned and convenient,
My death will come
And my artist’s voice will end.
Until it does,
What do I have to say?
What do I have to lament or celebrate?
