Poem of the Week, by Philip Larkin
Minnesotans! There’s plenty of room in my FREE workshop on Friday, May 2, 1-4 Central Time: The Echo That Remains. This workshop, held via Zoom, is for anyone who loved someone who died of suicide, substance abuse, or untreated mental or physical illness. Click here for more information and to register. Note that we do not share our writing with each other in this workshop, which you may find freeing. All are welcome, free of charge, no writing experience necessary.
Last week I stood on a beautiful bridge, watching the current flow beneath, when an idling motorboat dislodged a duck nest from the pilings. The nest went floating down the river, the mother duck frantic, fluttering up from her seven eggs and down again, helpless to stop the drift. Finally she jumped off and paddled to shore, her nest soon out of sight.
It hurt beyond all reason to witness that duck and her nest, because even though it was unintentional, too many other losses aren’t, like this heinous administration’s wanton, daily, abject cruelty. The world throws so much at all of us, animal and human; we should be careful of each other, and kind.
The Mower, by Philip Larkin
The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
a hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
killed. It had been in the long grass.
I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
unmendably. Burial was no help:
Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
is always the same; we should be careful
of each other, we should be kind
while there is still time.
Click here for more information about Philip Larkin.
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Once, at the end of a book club discussion held in the library of a women’s prison, the women (who are addressed as “offenders” on the prison P.A. system, as in, “Offenders, cell check in fifteen minutes”) took turns asking me personal questions from a list they had prepared. I remember only one of them: “
Alison McGhee 