Gosh, I'd never met Ralph, but really appreciated his presence on the OSlist and felt a really good connection with him.
Ralph submitted a powerful piece for Living Peace: the open space of our lives; an initial consideration of the personal practice of Open Space (http://www.archive.org/download/LivingPeaceTheOpenSpaceOfOurLives/living_peace.pdf) That poem is below. His spirit lives on. Raffi San Diego What It Means to Me Ralph Copleman With a shiver I snake around this commission, all sudden sighs and butterflies, rings of cold bronze. Still I clear my throat, and to it... This is running down a specter, stealthy stranger in familiar garb taking seats in the mindâs eye, a changeling unveiling vision, smiling at my glowing blind spot. It took me in stages. First I ran after it drooling, to corner it in my ambitious mind, trap it, leash it for my pet, a plaything for crowing, strutting. I pushed it around my neighborhood, showing it off, basking in its reflection, as if it were mine, as if it were I. Soon it slipped away, ran dizzying whorls and clamoring, pierced things. I scraped along walls, bloodied, Later I bathed in it, fervently suffusing its warm soapy gifts: love, journey, depthless plunges, angels, oceans, mountaintops, grief, chimaerae. I mark steps differently now, they echo now. I am a breathing collaborative, I circle to learn. I hear peace, feel its bones, its very NOW. Past and future then, embedded in pleats and folds, voices cracking, bright shuffles in the sublime for this, too, is the shady side and I do not know the place. And some worlds covet the conversation though most plunge headlong from that and birth some fresh next. At last I face this: possibility, pure, numinous, crackling, breathless. Nothing. Else. You ask the immeasurable, damn you. I fear this has neither end nor beginning, like the madness of art. Go neither looking nor shying nor naming, but go. Ralph Copleman 2008. * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected]: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
