she was style, she was an old loneliness that nothing could quite wipe away; she was vastly knowledgeable about people, about books, about the mind's emotions and the heart's. she lived sometimes in a black box of memories and unanswerable questions, and then would come out and frolic — be feisty, and bold

i believe she loved totally and was loved totally. i know about it, and i am glad. (...) i only mean to say that this love, and the ensuing emptiness of its ending, changed her. of such events we are always changed — not necessarily badly, but changed. who doesn't know this doesn't know much.

previously M. had gone back to new york for the winter, but that long fall we kept lingering, feeling our roots settling into that magical and beautiful town, and so we stayed on. it was difficult — no tourists in winter, few buyers of books. nut still, M. was taking and printing her own photographs, i was writing poems at the kitchen table, and we were young.

i first met M. in the late fifties, at the home of the poet edna st. vincent millay in upper new york state. i had gone there (the morning after i graduated from high school!) as a sort of pilgrim, i suppose. steepletop, as it was called, was a place — an estate really — of many acres and much beauty and, of course, great interest. (...)

i was seventeen; i was enthralled by everything, and more or less lived there for the next six or seven years, running around the 800 acres like a child, helping Norma, or at least being company to her. by and by, however, feeling in need of a life of my own — norma's possessiveness was formidable — i had moved to new york city, to the village. so much for scene setting. when i came back to steepletop one evening, with a friend, M., also with a friend, was sitting with norma at the kitchen table. i took one look and fell, hook and tumble. M. took one look at me, and put on her dark glasses, along with an obvious dose of reserve. She denied this to her dying day, but it was true.

a part of the pleasure no doubt was watching M. — her exactness, her patience, her certainty. fortunate are all who have had such an experience, in whatever discipline — watching a painter paint, or hearing music as the notes lift and dip into something that will be everlasting — they are sacred moments. especially if the person involved is someone you know intimately, but now all is cleared from the mind except the blessing, the heaven of work.

then M. instilled in me this deeper level of looking and working, of seeing through the heavenly visibles to the heavenly invisibles. i think of this always when i look at her photographs, the images of vitality, hopefulness, endurance, kindness, vulnerability. her world certainly wasn't daisies or birds or trees, as mine was; we each had our separate natures; vet our ideas, our influence upon each other, became a rich and abiding confluence.

i don't think I was wrong to be in the world i was in, it was my salvation from my own darkness. nor have i ever abandoned it — those earthly signs that so surely lead toward epiphanies. and yet, and yet, she wanted me to enter more fully into the human world also, and to embrace it, as i believe i have. and what a gilt to read about her wish for it, who never expressed impatience with my reports of the natural world, the blue and green happiness i found there. our love was so tight.