Thin Ice

There is no such thing as ordinary, I tell my students, usually in the context of teaching a poem or short story. Every work of art celebrates something, even if the work is also a catharsis of pain, anxiety, grief.

Too often, we must simultaneously celebrate and mourn.

Here and gone. Hoped for and feared. Together; alone.

Overcome, then overcome again.

And so we go forward in a way that feels like going way, way back. Let us call it creative mourning. Let us think of it as thin ice. May we find one another on the other side.


*

a
secret
out
and
maybe
back
thin
ice