Here's a February 21, 2023 )Mardi Gras Morning in new Orfleans) rendering of the poem about Paul that I first wrote on May 25, 2022.

 

 

                                           PAUL PLIMLEY

​

Paul, you ginger-haired Jack

                              with a smile

Popping up behind the couch 

As if out-of-a-box

For your Willie Winkie,

Post-performance, morning greeting!

​

Oh, yeah--Paul liked fun! 

He liked to "orbit round a light-bulb" (Donald Robinson).

Aussi, he engaged with Joycean

Grape and knife, exile and crown,

Several serious challenges 

There in keyboards and philosophies.

 

His Jaguar was an Emerald-Green

Station-Wagon. Don't 'cha just know

That Practical Style Malcolm Lowry

On his own Island might appreciate.

Home, Vancouver,

Ultramarine skies and mists

Beckoning Harborward,

Into Van's Mystic, far past Gray’s End.

 

Paul, you, the solid, elfin prodigy

Runaway stampeding

Beyond Rachmaninoff and Oscar Peterson

To Cecil's Beethovenesque runs and shocks,

Whilst never forgetting Sunday Comics

In the Sun and Province

For colors and whimsy 

Unstoppable as Sun Ra's pageants.

The whole deal, newspapers and panoplies, might make Catharsis

After World Wars.

 

Where there’s Dance, there’s Hope, Paul!

Your tender child’s peering into grown-ups'

Conversations found something else,

Apart, round the Corners,

So delicious and so endless.

You had to bring it to the world!

Your sweet self’s pondering and wrenching craft

Hath made things new.

 

 

Don Paul

May 25, 2022