A Poem for Stephen

So already, Stephen Tooker, a tenor with the Unicorn Singers for more than forty years, died on Friday, October 8. Stephen and I always got along, but we became real friends when the Unicorns and the Broad Cove Chorale were preparing to perform Craig Hella Johnson's "contemporary passion oratorio" Considering Matthew Shepard in March 2020.*

Stephen and I were similarly captivated and inspired by the oratorio when we first heard it in the summer of 2019, so we were immediately enthusiastic about the groups' performing it. Very soon thereafter, both of us began trying to articulate the reasons singers, audiences, and community organizations should embrace the opportunity to sing it, hear it, and support it respectively.

But the real fun--and the deeper connecting--began when we agreed to give a talk to the residents of Linden Ponds, the South Shore senior living community for whom the Broad Cove Chorale and Unicorn Singers regularly perform. 

Our task was to prepare the residents for Considering Matthew Shepard's musical and narrative content and to assure them that despite the serious, disturbing events they would encounter, they could still expect the musical evening to leave them feeling uplifted and hopeful. 

Stephen had been a professor of English at Massasoit Community College for years; I had been a teacher of English at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School for years. To prepare for the talk, we generated a set of questions and reservations people might have about the piece, read literature, listened to music, talked and wrote, and talked and wrote some more. Our real challenge, we soon understood, was trying to figure out how Craig Hella Johnson had managed to effect hope and healing despite his having vividly portrayed the horrific final days of Matthew's life and their aftermath. We embraced this challenge because we so believed in the power and importance of this piece.

Sadly, Stephen became ill before we could give the talk together, so I gave it on behalf of both of us. He had written so many beautiful, important things about the piece that I quoted him directly whenever I could. 

During the months following, we communicated at intervals through email. And when this past summer COVID vaccination and disease rates made it reasonably safe to visit people who were ill, another Unicorn friend and I went to visit Stephen where he was being cared for.

We had such a wonderful visit! Stephen regaled Kathleen and me with tales of his undergraduate days at Brown University, where his excellent singing was most appreciated.** Since I had earned my M.A.T. at Brown, I knew many of the places of which he spoke. His tales illuminated for me why the Brown University Bookstore always had such a huge number of early music LPs (I bought lots of them in 1978 for $1.00 or a $1.50 each at its sidewalk sales): it turns out there had been a vibrant early music scene to be found on and near campus, in part because Joel Cohen hailed from Providence and had also attended Brown before his Boston Camerata days. Meanwhile, a professor whom Stephen remembered vividly from those early music soirées was my professor in a course about English mystery and morality plays.

Stephen was so lively and so cheerful during our visit that I had to remind myself that he was ill. When he died, all I could think to do was to write something for him, since I could no longer write something with him. My poetry writing group had given itself the assignment of writing an "abecedarian,"*** so I decided I would write one about Stephen: after all, Stephen was a man of letters, and the requirement of this type of poem is letter-related: its first line must begin with an "a," its second line with a "b," its third line with a "c," etc.

So here is "Abecederian for Stephen."

   At eighteen, attuned already to truth and

   Beauty, curious and open, you trod the paved paths that

   Crisscrossed the Brown campus quadrangle.

   Drawn already to letters, notes and verse,

   Eager to unlock them and hold them close, you

   Found companions similarly intent and afire.

   Gifted with keys to the music library, you gathered after

   Hours to revel in singing seldom-circulated scores,

   Inspired and exulting in the privilege you’d earned,

   Journeying through musical centuries. Another

   Key you alone were granted—to the college chapel’s

   Loft, where the chapel’s bell hung in slant-lit silence

   Most afternoons: the minister surmised that the

   “New tenor” would enjoy reading in the loft’s warm solitude.

   Oh, I loved these stories of how your earnest, bright humility

   Prompted others to single you out, trusting that you’d

   Relish the gift they proffered, plant it in the garden of yourself, then

   Share it. Smiling, I rose to leave the house on the hill named for the

   Turkeys that roused you every morning with their clacking.

   “Until next time,” I said—then skipped a breath as I heard my

   Voice speak with the certainty I longed to feel—because I knew the

   Wolves were already at the door, not malign, but calmly

   eXpectant—true to nature, which ordains that the

   Young grow old and pass out of this world, and the very ill perish,

   Zealous though they be for more mornings and more song.

Matthew Shepard died on October 12; Stephen died on October 8; I will remember both of them every year during the second week of October. And I will remember Stephen much more frequently than that.

Confession/Addendum: Upon rereading my poem late last night, I realized I had failed to include a line that began with the letter "Q." I thought about adding one, and then decided this poem was close enough to being an abecedarian to be called one. And then I had another thought: it makes sense that something's missing from this poem; Stephen is missing from the lives of so many of us.

* We never got to perform Considering Matthew Shepard  because of COVID-19. 

** This photo of the edge of the Brown Green (as part of the academic quadrangle is called) is from several years ago; Brown is more than 250 years old. 

***I wrote about abecedarians in my most recent blog post.