(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Morning Open Thread: Are You Frightened of The Dark? [1] ['Greg Dworkin', 'Belinda Ridgewood', 'Sabrina Haake', 'Dan K', 'Bill In Portland Maine'] Date: 2026-05-18 “All wars are fought for money.” – Socrates, Greek Philosopher, 470 BC – 399 BC “There can be no compromise with war; it cannot be reformed or controlled; cannot be disciplined into decency or codified into common sense; for war is the slaughter of human beings, temporarily regarded as enemies, on as large a scale as possible.” – Jeannette Rankin, First woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, Women’s Rights Activist and Pacifist The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities … We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. – Dwight D. Eisenhower, WWII Allied Commander in Europe, U.S. President (1953-1961) ____________________________________________________ Welcome to Morning Open Thread, a daily post with a MOTley crew of hosts who choose the topic for the day’s posting. We support our community, invite and share ideas, and encourage thoughtful, respectful dialogue in an open forum. That’s a feature, not a bug. Other than that, site rulz rule. Morning Open Thread is looking for contributors — either occasional, or weekly. If interested, please contact officebss or Ozarkblue for more information. So grab your cuppa, and join in! ___________________________________________________ Thirteen poets born in May, some fought the wars without and all fought battles within – wars are never truly won, but battles shall always be fought. _______________ MAY 17 _______________ 1927 – Jacqueline “Jacquie’ Sturm AKA Jacqueline Baxter, and J.C. Sturm, born as Te Kare Papuni, in Opunake, Taranaki Region, NZ; New Zealand librarian, poet, and short story writer. She was adopted by the Sturns after her mother died, and was often the only Māori child in her classes. “I had taken on board the expectations of the Sturms, their friends and my teachers. I was expected to, simply because I was Māori, sing in harmony naturally, play any musical instrument by ear, have a perfect sense of rhythm, excel in all sports, especially team sports, be good at arts and crafts and anything that required manual dexterity, and I was, of course, a ‘born’ orator. I was also expected to be easygoing, happy-go-lucky, friendly, generous, have an unfailing sense of humour, and underneath all that, a certain dignity, even nobility. (Remember the Noble Savage?) If that lot makes you cringe, imagine if you can what my life would have been like if I’d been saddled with a matching set of negative expectations, as so many Māori children were then and still are. I was one of the lucky ones.” In 1946, she went to the University of Otago, the only Māori woman on campus. In 1947, she switched to Canterbury University College in Christchurch to study anthropology. She married fellow poet James K. Baxter in 1948, who already had a drinking problem – the beginning of a long and difficult marriage. She graduated from Victoria University College with a Bachelor of Arts in 1949, and gave birth to her daughter the same year. She earned Master of Arts in Philosophy in 1952 with first class honors, while pregnant with her son. She mostly wrote short stories in the 1950s. Her story “For All the Saints” was chosen for an anthology of New Zealand short stories, making Sturm the first Maori woman writer to have her work published in the English language. She was active from the late 1950s well into the 1960s in the Māori Women’s Welfare League. In 1969, Sturm began working at the Wellington Public Library, where she continued working for 27 years. She and her husband went through trial separations, but were still married when he died of coronary thrombosis at age 46 in 1972. Sturm was his literary executor. In 1983, Sturm’s collected short stories were published as The House of the Talking Cat by the women’s publishing collective Spiral. She began writing poetry again, and her first collection, Dedications, was published in 1996. Her other poetry collections are: How Things Are; Postscripts; and The Glass House. She died in December 2009 at age 82. What I’d like by J. C. Sturm I don’t much like the thought of being stretched out straight and stiff in a long box with all the warmth gone out of me. I don’t like to think of it or whatever follows after: worms to dust, a thrifty god’s miraculous recycling, an honourable god’s promised resurrection. No one knows what’s bound to be, No one has a choice. With luck what else, the how and where of it will be what I’d like, that’s all. First the box: keep it simple. Plain wood lined with cotton will do with wooden handles. I can’t stand chrome and satin. As for the spot: definitely not that place up the river – I’d hate that – or in a lonely valley or up a hill too steep to climb easily. You might like to visit on my Anniversary Day. And not in the suburbs, I lived there far too long. I want to be near the sea. Dig the hole good and deep and pack me down firmly. There might be a special dispensation that lets old bones buried well feel Paptuanuku tremble when Tangaroa comes pounding on her door. That’s what I’d like. . “What I’d Like” from Dedications © 1996 by J.C. Sturm _________________ 1936 – Lars Gustafsson born in Västerås, Sweden; Swedish poet, novelist, and scholar. He is not to be confused with Lars Gustafsson, the Swedish politician, who is still alive, or with Lars Gustafsson, the Swedish wrestler who competed in the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, who is also still living. This Lars Gustafsson published his first novel in 1959, and his first poetry collection the following year. Some of his poetry collections have been published in English translation in the U.S, including: The Stillness of the World Before Bach (New Directions, 1988), Elegies and Other Poems (New Directions, 2000), and A Time in Xanadu (Copper Canyon Press, 2008). He traveled extensively, and lived for two years in Berlin. Throughout his career, he was a frequent attendee at international academic and cultural conferences and events. American author John Updike described Gustafsson as “the enviably ideal conferee, a red-bearded fish never out of water, loving books, ideas, and discourse equally, and everywhere adept.”Gustafsson was a professor at the University of Texas at Austin from 1983 until 2006, when he retired and returned to Sweden. Gustafsson was honored with many awards for his writing, including the Gerard-Bonnier-Preis in 2006, the Goethe Medal in 2009, the Thomas Mann Prize in 2015, and the International Nonino Prize in Italy in 2016. This Lars Gustafsson died at age 79 in April 2016. The Wind Turns the Pages by Lars Gustafsson Late summer, the time of year that suits my age. And the slow, one might almost say, the patient, waves only go in with hesitation and hide in the small dark cavities under the stones of the shores. It is best to bail out our boats only when it is really necessary. A simple wisdom, this. And not unlike this one: To read the future, the unfinished text, only when it is really necessary. . “The Wind Turns the Pages” © 2005 by Lars Gustafsson, translation © 2005 by Susan W. Howard – first published at the online sight Poetry International _________________ 1961 – Han Dōng born in Nanjing, China, but his parents were “sent down” during the Cultural Revolution, and he went with them at age 8 to a farming village in northern Jiangsu province; Chinese novelist, poet, and short story writer. When the Cultural Revolution ended, he studied philosophy at Shandong University, graduating in 1982, and worked as a teacher. He resigned from teaching in 1992 to concentrate on writing. In 1995, he was awarded the Liu Li’an Poetry Prize. His first novel, Banished!, which draws on his own childhood experiences, was published in 2003, and translated into English by Nicky Harman in 2009. He wrote A Tabby-cat’s Tale and A Phone Call from Dalian: Selected Poems of Han Dong, both translated into English by Nicky Harman, but copies seem hard to find in the U.S. His other poetry collections are Baise de shitou (The white stone) and Baba zai tianshang kan wo (Daddy’s watching me in heaven). A Crackle of Bangers by Han Dōng A crackle of bangers expands space Fireworks erupt, decorating the skies Our beloved mother has gone And this splendid celebration feels strange Dying, the dead expand space Missing them, the living decorate the skies I stand on the veranda silently smoking The new city square deserted Walk away Two old–time people down new-world streets A future rolled out by glittering lights As if the sun had been extinguished yesterday The wind wafts river smells Explosions of fragrant mud Emptiness receives me in its embrace Mysterious kindness opening like a wintersweet flower Walk away Who bequeathed us this world, as they bequeathed us to it? Who traded old for new, rewrote this New Year? A crackle of bangers expands space From here on we are more intimate with death — February 8th, 2011 . “A Crackle of Bangers” © 2011 by Han Dōng – English translation © by Nicky Harman _______________ MAY 18 _______________ 1890 – Zora Cross born as Zora Bernice May Cross in Eagle Farm, Queensland, Australia; Australian poet, best-selling novelist, journalist, and teacher, who sometimes used the pen name Bernice May. She was best known for her serialized novels, poetry collections, and children’s verse. She attended Sydney Teachers’ College, and taught for several years, often acting with a touring theatre company when school was not in session. Her first marriage to a fellow actor failed, but she gave birth to a son. She then became a journalist for Brisbane’s weekly newspaper, The Boomerang, where she did a series of significant interviews with contemporary Australian women authors before becoming a freelance writer. She married writer David McKee Wright in 1923, and they lived in the Blue Mountains village of Glenbrook, and had two daughters. She published six novels, an instruction book on the study of Australian literature, and five poetry collections, including: Songs of Love and Life; The City of Riddle-Me-Ree, a book of children’s verse; and Elegy on an Australian Schoolboy. She died at age 73 in January of 1964. Books by Zora Cross Oh! Bury me in books when I am dead, Fair quarto leaves of ivory and gold, And silk octavos, bound in brown and red, That tales of love and chivalry unfold. Heap me in volumes of fine vellum wrought, Creamed with the close content of silent speech; Wrap me in sapphire tapestries of thought From some old epic out of common reach. I would my shroud were verse-embroidered too—- Your verse for preference—in starry stitch, And powdered o’er with rhymes that poets woo, Breathing dream-lyrics in moon-measures rich. Night holds me with a horror of the grave That knows not poetry, nor song, nor you; Nor leaves of love that down the ages weave Romance and fire in burnished cloths of blue. Oh, bury me in books, and I’ll not mind The cold, slow worms that coil around my head; Since my lone soul may turn the page and find The lines you wrote to me, when I am dead. . “Books” from The Lilt of Life, by Zora Cross, originally published in 1918 _______________ MAY 19 _______________ 701 – Li Bai born in the coastal province of Shandong during the Tang Dynasty, Chinese poet, calligrapher, and translator. He is acclaimed as a brilliant and innovative poet, one of the most prominent figures in the Tang “Golden Age of Poetry.” Around 1000 poems attributed to Li Bai are still extant, because they were collected and complied in 753 by Yin Fan. The Tang’s “golden age” was abruptly shattered by a rebellion in late 755 led by General An Lushan. His reign as Emperor lasted only 11 months, from February 756 to January 757. He was then killed by his son An Qingxu, whose own reign lasted from 757 to 759, when he was executed by General Shi Siming. These years of war caused devastation and famine, and Li Bai was at one point captured and sentenced to death, but was pardoned. He is one of the few poets of his time whose work has survived up to the present day substantially intact. He died around age 61 in 762. In the 18th century, translations of his poetry began to appear in Europe. Several of his poems are still taught to Chinese schoolchildren. Zazen on Ching-t’ing Mountain by Li Bai The birds have vanished down the sky. Now the last cloud drains away. We sit together, the mountain and me, until only the mountain remains. , “Zazen on Ching-t’ing Mountain” by Li Bai, translation © 2000 by Sam Hamill, from Crossing the Yellow River: Three Hundred Poems from the Chinese – BOA Editions _________________ 1963 – Kristin Dimtrova born in Sofia, Bulgaria; Bulgarian writer, poet, editor, and translator; Graduated in English and American Studies from the Sofia University, where she works in the university’s Department of Foreign Languages. Dimitrova was editor (2004-2006) of Art Trud, a weekly arts and culture supplement of the Trud Daily, and a columnist (2007-2008) for Klasa Daily. She is the widow of fellow poet and literary critic Vladimir Trendafilov. Author of 11 poetry books, which include: A Face Under the Ice; Faces with Twisted Tongues; Talisman Repairs; The People with the Lanterns; and My Life in Squares. Through the window of a song by Kristin Dimtrova This is not simply a song, simply a mouth. It’s a hole the eternal world bursts through, the breath of true chaos where intentions are primordial sparks. Every sense is equally awake, unreconciled, undistorted, the point exists only for itself, time has yet to be born. It’s a gap the most ancient songs burst through on their leather wings, a narrow window onto that which maybe we were and which we could be. Windows. They open, they close. The fear of draught makes us extra careful. Are you frightened of the dark? With you – no. . “Through the window of a song” by Kristin Dimtrova was first published in Bulgarian in Dear Passengers (2018) – English translation by Tom Phillips _______________ MAY 20 _______________ 1924 – Mitsuo Aida born in the Tochigi prefecture, Japan; Japanese poet and calligrapher known for his Zen-inspired art and writings. He is considered one of the most important calligraphers and poets of the 20th century in Japan. He attended Kanto Junior College in Tatebayashi, Gunma Prefecture on Honshu Island. His best-known works are Ningen damono (Because I Am Human); Okagesan (Our Debt to Others); andInochi ippai (Live a Full Life). Aida died at age 67 from a brain hemorrhage in December 1991. My Beautiful Life by Misuo Aida Because it has lived its life intensely the parched grass still attracts the gaze of passers-by. The flowers merely flower, and they do this as well as they can. . “My Beautiful Life” from The Here and Now: The Art, Ideas and Poetry of Mitsuo Aida, © 1996 by Tim Jensen – Mitsui Aida Museum Publications _________________ 1949 – Michèle Roberts born to a French mother and an English father in Bushey, Hertfordshire, England, and holds dual UK-French citizenship. She is a writer, novelist, poet, memoirist, and librarian. Roberts was educated at a convent, expecting to become a nun, before reading English at Somerville College, Oxford, where she lost her Catholic faith. She also studied at University College London, training to be a librarian, and worked as a librarian (1973-1974) for the British Council in Bangkok, Thailand. Active in socialist and feminist politics since the 1970s, she formed a writers’ collective with Sara Maitland, Michelene Wandor, and Zoe Fairbairns. Roberts was the Poetry editor (1975-1977) at the feminist magazine Spare Rib and at the weekly City Limits (1981-1983). Her first novel, A Piece of the Night, was published in 1978. Her 1992 novel Daughters of the House was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and won the 1993 WH Smith Literary Award. Her memoir Paper Houses was published in 2007, and her Negative Capability: A Diary of Surviving came out in 2020. Roberts teaches creative writing at the University of East Anglia. Her poetry collections include: The Mirror of the Mother; Psyche and the Hurricane; and All the Selves I Was. Christina Rossetti Scribbles a Memo to a Young Friend by Michèle Roberts Don’t let your heart shrink to a dingy house don’t starve your soul like a grey church mouse on crusts and crumbs, all that your priest allows leap out of bed, let greed for words begin breakfast on bread and honey, butter spread thick as sin let pleasure on the tongue release the angel within drape your cat around your shoulders and stroke her till she’s purred – the part of yourself that is brindled and furred and can hiss, and pounce, and disembowel a bird unclasp your hands from bibles and prayers let your desire race you whistling up the stairs over threadbare regrets and faded love affairs inside the attic, where the future knocks throw back the lid of your dressing-up box put on the most sumptuous of all your party frocks let your skirts flare out, gold petticoats bright as a rage of seraphs, jostling tight as a rustle of sunflowers that burn with light be brave as these – sit down and write. . “Christina Rossetti Scribbles a Memo to a Young Friend” from her Poems & Recipes online page, © by Michèle Roberts _______________ MAY 21 _______________ 1923 – Dorothy Hewitt born, Australian poet, novelist, playwright, feminist and lesbian. Her family had made money in various businesses, but lost most of it during an economic depression, and moved to a farm. While working under pen names for the Communist paper, The Tribune, she also worked in a clothing factory, so her first novel, Bobbin Up, is semi-autobiographical. She worked for a time in the 1950s as a copywriter, first for a department store, and then for Leyden Publishing. Hewitt became disillusioned with the Communist Party in the 1960s, and renounced her membership after the Soviet Army’s brutal suppression of the Prague Spring in 1968; her collection of poems, Rapunzel in Suburbia, was published in 1975, and Virago Press published her autobiography, Wild Card. She published eight poetry collections of her own work, including: The Hidden Journey; Greenhouse; Peninsula; and Halfway up the Mountain. Among her many honors are two Australian Writers’ Guild Awards, The Australian Poetry Prize, the Turnbull Fox Phillips Banjo Award, and three Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards for Poetry. She also collaborated on three other poetry collections with other poets, and wrote many plays and musical theatre shows. Dorothy Hewitt died from breast cancer at age 79 in August 2002. Digging It In by Dorothy Hewiit My father’s spade has the hollow sound of regret Goodbye Dad but he doesn’t look up where the cannas once grew by the drain sour and stubborn he keeps on digging. The melancholy acres stretch away behind him the trees already dying a crow flaps crying along the boundary fence where once the timber stood. I have disappointed him once again another dream gone west I won’t be here to listen to his plans to rechannel the salty creek replant the trees rejuvenate the farm he will lease it out for a pittance eventually selling it off for next to nothing run down one sheep to the acre but all the way back driving across the Nullarbor over the cattle grids through the dog-proof fence an empty drum on the boundary WELCOME TO WESTERN AUSTRALIA I will hear the sound of his spade savagely breaking the clods for a kitchen garden. . “Digging It In” from Selected Poems, © 1991 by Dorothy Hewitt – Fremantle Arts Centre Press _________________ 1952 – Willa Schneberg born in Brooklyn, NY, to Jewish parents who were first generation Americans and teachers; American interdisciplinary artist and poet, author of five poetry collections: In The Margins Of The World, winner of the 2002 Oregon Book Award; Box Poems; Storytelling In Cambodia; and Rending the Garment; and The Naked Room. In 1973, she earned a degree in creative writing and fine art from Empire State College. In 1975, she moved to the Boston area to study ceramics in Boston University’s Program in Artisanry for professional crafts people. Her first collection of poetry, Box Poems, was published in 1979 by Alice James Books, a non-profit poetry press which focused on publishing works written by women. In 1980, she was an artist-in-residence for the Department of Defense Dependent Schools (DoDDS) at American military bases in the Philippines, Korea, Japan, and Okinawa, teaching poetry and clay sculpture workshops for students from kindergarten through community college. After returning to U.S. in 1980, she studied Gestalt therapy at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. Then she attended graduate school (1981-1983) at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, earning a Master of Science in social work (MSSW). She has since worked in Israel (1987-1988) with at-risk children, in Cambodia for the UN Transitional Authority (1992-1993) on voter registration and briefing medical volunteers for field hospitals and inoculation programs. Since 1993, she has lived in Portland, Oregon in the mental health field. She has also exhibited her ceramic sculpture and photographs. Two of her poems, “Biscuits” (see below) and “Spilled Milk” were read on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac. Biscuits by Willa Schenberg Mostly when I’m vacuuming the carpet in Mr. Besdine’s office I don’t worry, just do the work and know I’ll be sleeping in my own bed when all the desks in all them offices will have people sitting around them. Sometimes I don’t hear the vacuum cleaner and I’m quiet like when I play Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow in the Mission Baptist Church. There are other times I imagine fixing biscuits unrolling my cloth from the coffee can, flour still on it from the last time, smoothing it out on the counter, cloth white, flour white. My mother’s biscuit cutter made from an old Pet Milk can, not a tack of rust on it, presses in easy as a body to a hammock. Some like biscuits and gravy, I myself fancy biscuits with my homemade muscadine jelly that comes from the muscadine grape that grows wild. . “Biscuits” from In The Margins of The World, © 2000 by Willa Schneberg – Plain View Press _________________ 1967 – Lemn Sissay born in Wigan, Lancaster, UK, after his mother arrived in Britain from Ethiopia, pregnant with her son, and was sent to a home for unwed mothers. Sissay is a UK poet, dramatist, broadcaster, children’s author and nonfiction writer. He was put in foster care by a social worker, supposedly just while his mother finished her studies, but the worker told the foster parents to regard it as a placement for adoption. They renamed him Mark and gave him their last name, Greenwood. By the time he was 12, they had three children of their own, and placed him in a children’s home, telling him they would never contact him again. When he aged out of the system, he was finally given his birth certificate and a letter his mother had written pleading to get her son back. He took back his birth name, and started searching for his mother. He used his unemployment benefit to publish his first poetry pamphlet, Perceptions of the Pen, and sold it to striking miners. At age 21, he finally found his mother, who was working for the UN in Gambia. Since age 24, Sissay has been a full-time writer. He was the official poet of the 2012 London Olympics, and was awarded the 2019 PEN Pinter Prize. His poetry collections include Tender Fingers in a Clenched Fist; Rebel Without Applause; Listener; and Let the Light Pour In. Let There Be Peace by Lemn Sissay Let there be peace So frowns fly away like albatross And skeletons foxtrot from cupboards, So war correspondants become travel show presenters And magpies bring back lost property, Children, engagement rings, broken things. Let there be peace So storms can go out to sea to be Angry and return to me calm, So the broken can rise up and dance in the hospitals. Let the aged Ethiopian man in the grey block of flats Peer through his window and see Addis before him, So his thrilled outstretched arms become frames For his dreams. Let there be peace Let tears evaporate to form clouds, cleanse themselves And fall into reservoirs of drinking water. Let harsh memories burst into fireworks that melt In the dark pupils of a child’s eyes And disappear like shoals of silver darting fish, And let the waves reach the shore with a Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh . “Let There Be Peace” from Gold from the Stone: New and Selected Poems, © 2016 by Lemn Sissay – Canongate Book Ltd. _______________ MAY 22 _______________ 1870 – Eva Gore-Booth born at Lissadell House, County Sligo, Ireland, to Sir Henry and Lady Georgina Gore-Booth, and was educated at home. Her father was a traveler and Arctic explorer who was often gone for long periods. Her mother started a school of needlework for young women which enabled them to earn a decent wage from selling their wares. This had a great influence of Gore-Booth’s later activism as suffragist and advocate for trade unionism. When she was 14, she went with her father to Jamaica, Barbados, Cuba, Florida, New Orleans, St Louis, San Francisco, Vancouver, Toronto, Niagara, Montreal and Quebec. O her return to Ireland, she met W.B. Yeats for the first time. who was taken with the poems she showed him, and urged her to continue writing. The next year, she went to Italy with her mother, one of her sisters, and a friend, but fell ill in Venice, and stayed with writer George MacDonad and his wife at their villa while recuperating. There, she met Esther Roper, an Englishwoman who was secretary of the North of England Society for Women‘s Suffrage, who became her companion for the rest of her life. Gore-Booth moved to Manchester with Roper to dedicate her life to serving working women. The two of them had some limited success in bringing together women who were working for suffrage, and trade unionist women, to make common cause in the advancement of women’s rights. Gore-Booth was one of the first suffragists to advocate for voting rights for working women as well as women of property. In 1911, she participated in the Suffragette Census Boycott, and was a member of the delegation that urged Prime Minister Lloyd George not to drop the 1911 Conciliation Bill that would have granted limited voting rights to property-owning women. But Lloyd George was succeeded by Henry Asquith, who supported a bill extending voting rights only to males who met the minimum property ownership requirement. During WWI, Gore-Booth joined the Women’s Peace Crusade and the No-Conscription Fellowship. Throughout all these years, she was writing in her journal, and composing poems. Eva’s sister Constance had taken part in the failed 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin against British Rule, and had been condemned to death, but Gore-Booth was instrumental in getting her sentence commuted to life imprisonment. During her final years, she continued to write poetry, but also became an anti-vivisectionist and supporter of animal welfare. Eva Gore-Booth died of cancer at age 56 in June 1926. She is one of the 58 suffrage supporters whose names are inscribed on the plinth of the statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square in London, which was unveiled in 2018. The Quest by Eva Gore-Booth For years I sought the Many in the One, I thought to find lost waves and broken rays, The rainbow’s faded colours in the sun– The dawns and twilights of forgotten days. But now I seek the One in every form, Scorning no vision that a dewdrop holds, The gentle Light that shines behind the storm, The Dream that many a twilight hour enfolds. “The Quest” is from Poems by Eva Gore-Booth, originally published in 1923 – republished in 2012 by Nabu Press _______________ MAY 23 _______________ 1947 – Jane Kenyon born in Ann Arbor, Michigan; American poet, translator, and essayist, who won the 1994 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry for her body of work. made a long journey in a short life. Before she died in 1996 from leukemia, a month and a day before her 48th birthday, Kenyon published four volumes of poetry, and a volume of translations of the poems of Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. While at the University of Michigan, student Jane Kenyon had met professor and poet Donald Hall. In 1972, they married, he for the second time, she for the first – there was a 19-year difference in their ages. A couple of years later, they spent what was supposed to be a working summer vacation on Hall’s grandparents’ Eagle Pond Farm in New Hampshire, but his grandmother, who was in a nursing home, died while they were there. They bought the farm from her heirs, and moved in permanently. Kenyon fought a recurring battle with depression even before she became ill. She was diagnosed with leukemia, and a bone-marrow transplant failed. Kenyon was editing Otherwise: New and Selected Poems until just before her final days. The editing was finished later by her husband, and Otherwise was published posthumously. The Blue Bowl by Jane Kenyon .Like primitives we buried the cat with his bowl. Bare-handed we scraped sand and gravel back into the hole. It fell with a hiss and thud on his side, on his long red fur, the white feathers that grew between his toes, and his long, not to say aquiline, nose. We stood and brushed each other off. There are sorrows much keener than these. Silent the rest of the day, we worked, ate, stared, and slept. It stormed all night; now it clears, and a robin burbles from a dripping bush like the neighbor who means well but always says the wrong thing. . “The Blue Bowl” from Collected Poems, © 2005 by the Estate of Jane Kenyon – Graywolf Press __________________________________ G’Morning/Afternoon/Evening MOTlies! __________________________________ [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/5/18/800040124/community/morning-open-thread-are-you-frightened-of-the-dark/ Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/