Posted by Glenn Tobey on March 16, 2002 at 21:35:26:
This last Thursday I learned from Gene of Wendy's passing. Today, I met briefly with Gene and have just visited Wendy's Website. My inital shock and saddness are now belended with an amazement and wonder at all that Wendy did. Her face and exuberant joy speak to a richness and intensity of life beyond what any words could every express. I offer here a poem by a member of a writers group I belonged to in Montclaire, California a couple of years ago. The poem, "Summer Dawn," was witten by Henry P Sheng's mother Vena Yen Sheng in China and translated by Henry. Henry is a university professor with a poetic talent that unfortunately has been constrained by his humility. I thought of this poem as I read about Wendy.
Summer Dawn
The morning clouds are heavy, damp and low. The rising sun
Turns half the heavns a deep scarlet with a fiery ease.
I dream of butterflies, a pure white lotus, only one.
And then I wake, and sense its heady frangrance in the breeze.
____________
Souls like Wendy leave a sweet frangrance that endures and informs the countless lives of those who breathe deeply of life's beauty, who know instinctively that life never dies: Only death dies. So, here's to Wendy, to the soul of a pure white lotus whose fragrance will never die.
Friend, Glenn Tobey