I attended a poetry workshop on Saturday, and my favorite poem of the day was by Terry Lucas, the new Marin County poet laureate. I said in the workshop that I had recently read that by writing about a bad experience one was able to shift one’s relationship to it to that of witness. I think this poem does that perfectly.
Dear Frogs of Pinckneyville, Illinois
Forgive me for all the times I forced you
into Welch’s Grape Jelly jars filled with cotton balls
soaked with ether from my father’s starter fluid can
he sprayed into dead diesel engines
on frozen December mornings. I am truly sorry
for not throwing you higher. Please know that I wanted to
put you into orbit like Belka and Strelka, the first
warm-blooded animals to trick gravity and return
alive, but my nine-year old arm wasn’t strong enough