In Memory of Steven Barza

A colleague died this week. He'd only been sick for a few weeks, and none of us knew how sick he was. So his death comes as a shock.

Here's a poem he wrote that I like a lot:

Just Up

When we awaken there is a moment
before we remember
the burdens we bear,
that yesterday we lost or won
a fortune or a battle or a love
or that today we must go
to work or to court or to hospital
or we have nowhere to go,
before we start piecing together
who we have been or who we will be,
and in that moment we are simply
consciousness, sensation,
appetite not yet linked to
memory or will.
I like the way we are
in that naked moment
before we are defined,
in that briefest moment
before we don ourselves.

This appeared in the Utne Reader in Jan/Feb 2003, reprinted from Crab Creek Review, Spring/Summer 2002.