Threnody
by Shanda Blue Easterday
Later the same day I learn the meaning
of "threnody," which cannot be repeated
too often, this song or poem celebrating
or lamenting a life lost but well lived,
written to remember the many questions
unasked while you were living, such as "Did
you read the novels of William Coughlin?"
You read most Michigan authors, and I
find these books entertaining in a way
that you might have, to celebrate
your appetite for literature and life,
however common or exceptional,
like rules for imagists or pink petals
on a wet deep green bough.
Shanda Blue Easterday is a retired professor of Literatures in English,
current editor and contributor for Grit and Grace: A Women Writing Anthology,
and editor for Mind Vine Press. She sits on the board of a local school. Her
poems have appeared in Aesthetica, The Dos Passos Review, Dislocate, The
Louisville Review, Flying Island, and in many other places. Her poetry collection
The Beekeeper's Wife was published in 2011 as was a chapbook, From Egg to
Moth, poems about Maria Sybilla Marian.