Write Together 2026 is open for registration! Come write with us for an hour each morning, January 12-17. Each day’s Zoom session features different readings, different prompts, and the chance to write quietly together in solidarity and appreciation. Click here for more information and to sign up. 

At my friend Zdrazil’s memorial service, the offering plates were filled with things John loved for all of us to take as remembrances. I still have a little bag of quarters (he used to give money away to people who needed it) sitting in a corner of my kitchen, and every time I see it I smile, because Zdrazil was wonderful, and one of the great friends of my life.

When I open the cabinet door above the sink, my old friend Garvin is there, smiling down at me from a photo of the two of us. A plastic bag in a corner of my closet holds two of my grandmother’s dresses, untouched for nearly thirty years, and when I need her more than usual I open the bag so her scent comes wafting up to me. Right now I’m wearing a slender gold chain around my neck that holds my parents’ twined wedding rings. We call our loved ones back with our love.

The Loved Ones, by Wendell Berry

The loved ones we call the dead
depart from us and for a while are absent.  And then as if
called back by our love, they come
near us again.  They enter our dreams.
We feel they have been near us
when we have not thought of them.
They are simply here, simply waiting
while we are distracted among
our obligations.  At last
it comes to us: They live now
in the permanent world.
We are the absent ones.

Click here for more information about Wendell Berry. Today’s poem first appeared in the November 17, 2025 issue of The New Yorker. 
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