Stephen Kretchmer: R.I.P

It's been a week since news of your death reached me. Naturally, I thought it was medical, some long or short cancer you had kept secret to yourself, maybe even a heart attack you didn't even know was lurking. "What was it?" I asked the caller, my editor, whose regard for you was as deep as mine. "Cancer?" "No, motorcycle," she answered, like it was a leading cause of death.

Later in the week, I learned you were turning a bend in the road at whose concealed end a car was making a U-turn and there was no way to avoid a collision. How could there be any way for us to get used to the news of your death when you had no way to get used to it?

The motorcycle dead aren't like any other. They leave an emptiness that can't be filled, a tiny hollow in the heart, an ache in the pit of the throat, a gap that can't be closed even by a fist. The motorcycle dead don't go gentle into that good night. They rage against the dying of the light, often adding one incendiary final flare to it. Until you, my motorcycle dead had been Richard Farina and John Gardner, no one I knew personally.

I'm glad I got the chance to pay earnest tribute to you in Las Vegas at the palladium seminar, while you were still alive, while word might have got back to you that I called you my guru in jewelry matters and that I wouldn't have been on that rostrum if not for you. I wanted the industry to know how much you meant to me because you meant as much to them. So I told the audience how I went to you and asked you to steer me clear of palladium if it was, in your estimation, a lousy metal. And you thought for a moment, then answered, "You Know, Dvaid, I can't think of one good reason not to use it."

Now it's come time, unfairly sudden, to say goodbye. You were a maker. So much of you that is good will survive you. Your estate was well-distributed before you died. And you will be forever synonymous with good work and ceaseless creativity. So all of us who knew you will be grateful custodians of your memory.

Rest in the peace you deserve and which I pray you have no choice but to find. May you become the standard bearer for the reminiscences we have of each other, we who are united in collegial love and respect.

When the news came, I knew I would read the following poem in your memory, a poem from 1964 by Gary Snyder to a beloved potter friend who was one of the motorcycle dead. I can't think of a better elegy for you than this.

FOR JOHN CHAPPELL

Over the Arafura sea, the China sea,
Coral Sea, Pacific
chains of volcanoes in the dark--
you in Sydney where it's summer;
I imagine the last ride outward
late at night.
stiff new gears--tight new engine
up some highway I have never seen
too fast--too fast--
like I said at Tango
when you went down twice on gravel--

Did you have a chance to think
o shit I've fucked it now
instant crash and flight and sudden death--

Malaya, Indonesia
Taiwan, the Philippines, Okinawa
families sleeping--reaching--
humans by the millions
world of breathing flesh.

me in Kyoto. You in Australia
wasted in the night.
black beard, mad laugh, and sadly serious brow.
earth lover; shaper and maker.
potter, cooker,

now be clay in the ground.

--Gary Snyder, from: "The Back Country," Fulcrum Press, London, 1967