Poets and Poems: Dave Brown and "I Don't Usually, But"

I can’t recall when it began, but some years back, I discovered myself thinking of things that hadn’t been even a small blip on my radar when I was younger. I know it started before I retired. One morning, I woke up, fixed my breakfast, and started reading the obituary page in the newspaper. Regularly. Like, every day. I wouldn’t read each entry, but I’d scan the names, looking for people I might now or had heard of.

 

Eventually I started finding names I knew. People I had worked with. Former executives I’d written speeches for. People I knew from church. It was unsettling. I remember my mother, who for as long as I could remember had faithfully attended her annual high school class reunion. She finally stopped, explaining quietly that only three people were left. 

As you move into old age, you receive regular reminders of your own mortality, and not only from newspaper obituaries. As poet Dave Brown has discovered and written in I Don’t Usually, But, things that were never paid much attention to before take on meaning. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Thursday Readings

 

4711 – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

“Tall Nettles,” poem by Edward Thomas – Sally Thomas ay Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Poet Laura: Written in March – Donna Hilbert at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

“Sally in Our Alley,” poem by Henry Carey – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

“Tears of the widower” and “The lesser griefs,” from In Memoriam by Alfred, Lord Tennyson – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.