Willie

Like you, perhaps, I knew the Lincolns had a son named Willie. And also perhaps like you,

I knew he had died as a boy when the family was living in the White House. Old history

lessons — we carry them around with us, never quite sure if, when, or where they will be needed. And then, very early one spring morning, while outside grass grows and lilacs are swelling to bloom, there arrives a painful reminder and revelation: the Lincolns’ boy is dead.

All these years, the news was waiting in the shadows. A pail is lowered into the well. But will the same hands bring it up again? That we never know, and never will.

Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, Volume I

Recently Received

Thank you, Jonathan,

for your lovely booklet of poems,

Horizontal Monolith (Into the Snow Hatch),

so beautifully inscribed.

Thank you, Paul,

for Comfort Found in Good Old Books,

the essay volume a hundred

one years old.

Treasured gifts, treasured friends.

Thanks, also, to those who have asked after me during this quiet time.

The reading goes on.

Each day I drift a thousand miles.

I’m willing to go.