Gretchen Hodgin




To Myself When I Am Sobbing to Pachelbel

for the Fiftieth Time in One Night:


Get up.  Your tears are stuck to your hair
like oil on feathers, and there's a strand
in both your eyes.  Get up.  How dare


you doubt what you don't understand
and never will.  And why do you
insist on waiting for a hand

to intervene when you've had two
since you were born?  You can't dispute
the world or wonder what to do

when no one's asking that from fruit,
or mud, or fleas, or whales, or wind.
The trees don't question their pursuit,

so why should you?  Get up.  Don't spend
your unassuming history
preparing for your quiet end.

Go be, "Red works on you."  Go be
some picked-up trash.  Get up.  Go be
another person's Canon in D.




Originally from South Carolina, Gretchen Hodgin now lives in Baltimore, Maryland. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming in Gargoyle, The Lyric, Sewanee Theological Review, Magma Poetry, and The Country Dog Review, among others. She is a poetry reviewer for JMWW magazine.









                                    

 

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