celebrating lives greatly full :: ted buglas

I've known Ted Buglas for over 20 years.  I originally met him through work, and still have the pleasure of crossing paths with him in our shared workplace.  But he is much more than a colleague to me: he has become a dear friend.  In fact, I have been known to publicly state that Ted is one of my favourite people on the planet.  :-) 

Ted has an incredible sense of humour, too often at his own expense, and his love for art and design are expressed in everything he does.  But it is his mastery of words that puts him in another stratosphere, in my opinion.  I could easily ask him about a film I care nothing about, simply to hear him describe it. Listening to him describe the storyline, using language that sometimes makes me want to reach for a dictionary, is like listening to a newly composed piece of music.  He is the artist and language is his art.

Knowing this, I should not have been surprised when a simple request to share what he was grateful for lead to this amazing piece called "Graceland".  Thank you, Ted.  I am so grateful my world has you in it!


Graceland
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For every star that went before, the million years,

The million beasts that marched a while in life’s parade,

Our season in the trees, and our descent

To build the pyramids and shopping malls.

 

For Soviets, for fear of the apocalypse, 

For Castro, Camelot, the Viet Cong, 

Our old blue van, the fallout shelter where

Two flower children tripped a nuclear bomb.

 

For symbiotic bliss and liquid breath,

A gentle ebbing amniotic sea,

Then primal calls to breach the walls of Jericho,

Hang Canaan's kings and claim that promised land.

 

For the long garden of youth, the morning brimming,

With wonder under every stone, up every tree,

Love won or lost, the back or cheek we turned,

The knowledge earned, the innocence it cost.

 

For all the lonely shade grown Narcissists   

Toiling Facebook's digital plantation,

For tour de France heroes, for fund-hedging gurus,

And global patricians and suburban Neros.

 

For all the humble pleasures that abide,

Beyond the days that must be scaled like walls,

Our gnarled fingers reaching to entwine,

While fair from fair declines yet beauty lingers.

 

Yes, even for this sad diminuendo,

For the ticking clock and its sound of subtraction,

The shame of our incontinent geography,

This filament, this wisp, mortality.

 

For every anxious breath and each reprieve,

For what we gave, and what we shall receive.