American life in Poetry

Bad news all too often arrives with a ringing telephone, all too early in the morning. But sometimes it comes with less emphasis, by regular mail.

Here Allan Peterson of Florida gets at the feelings of receiving bad news by letter, not by directly stating how he feels, but by suddenly noticing the world that surrounds the moment when that news arrives.

The Inevitable

To have that letter arrive

was like the mist that took a meadow

and revealed hundreds

of small webs once invisible

The inevitable often

stands by plainly but unnoticed

till it hands you a letter

that says death and you notice

the weed field had been

readying its many damp handkerchiefs

all along