When I was in grade school, I read Richard Shelton's "Certain Choices," and I have never forgotten the closing stanza:
I have few friends, and none of them
are replaceable. That's the way it is
with friends. We make certain choices.
I'd misplaced Shelton's name for years, and the rest of the poem too (it's one of those that unfortunately seems to get attributed to "Author Unknown" more often than the writer himself), but thanks to Google Books, I finally read the whole thing again within
his memoir of being a prison volunteer. And some other people have reposted it
on Tumblr and other spaces.
In Camille T. Dungy's
Smith Blue, there's a poem titled "
Association Copy," which is about a book that used to be owned by Lynda Hull. The opening lines:
Maybe you sold it to buy junk. Though I like to think not.
And I don't want to think you used the money for food
or rent or anything obligatory, practical...
And then the fourth and fifth lines are very
Linda, to my eyes:
A pair of boots, perhaps. Thigh high burgundy boots
with gold laces. Something crucial as lilies.

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Published on April 09, 2014 20:26