Sublime

for

“Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,” says poet Naomi Shihab Nye, “you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.”

I thought to myself Just like a pearl I have been smoothed by friction.

Gold died from pancreatic cancer in 2018 at the age of fifty-seven. The day after, I drove around Los Angeles to eat three of his favorite Mexican dishes: smoked marlin tacos in Inglewood, a shrimp taco in Boyle Heights, the clayuda at an Oaxacan restaurant in Koreatown.

“I don’t create so much as I collect,” explained the poet. “The world is already so rich. All I do is distill the messiness of human life into a concentrated reading experience.”