“Flood seen through a car window” Photo by Vic Burkhammer

I’ve been consumed recently with politics. Months before an election, I am hit with a flood of politics, and when I next look up, it seems, it’s almost Memorial Day.

Wil Haygood, a friend who writes for The Washington Post, called me the other day. We wanted to talk longer than we could at that moment. Wil had been traveling with the Obama campaign in North Carolina.

This morning from the APPALNET listserv, I received a note about Ron Eller’s “Obama’s ‘Appalachian Problem’? It’s Not So Easy.” The word cogent comes to mind.

I see how some of the media got it all wrong about Obama and West Virginia. The viewpoint piece online references an interesting slideshow of “The Photos That Began the War on Poverty.”

I want my poetry to take into account these things in some sense, not to explain them, but to put the truth of it all out there in the most powerful way possible for all to see. West Virginians are being stereotyped again.

***

Here’s another poem I wish I had written — “The Lanyard” by Billy Collins.

Click here to watch Collins read it on fora.tv — this poem I thought about on Mother’s Day. I’m glad Mom, after many difficulties, is doing well. She isn’t computer saavy, but she used to keep a computer around for the kids. Mom better appreciates a face-to-face visit, a phone call or a trip to the store.

I’m sure Mom would like this poem’s apt guiding image and its sense of humor. Maybe the poem would become a sort of lanyard itself as I told her about it, and she would smile to be nice to me. Way back, before I caught on, I used to give Mom things I secretly wanted. Once I bought her a copy of Thomas Mann’s Collected Stories.

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