My wife and I were walking to town
with our dog, Binx, when our kindly neighbor,
Rachel, rushed over to us from her house
across the street. She’d just been diagnosed
with lymphoma, she said, and would start chemo
treatments next week. Her nurse, standing
in her driveway, waved. We know her well enough
to say hello, smile when passing. Once my wife
and I helped her find her lost dog, for which
she’s thanked us repeatedly. Now her large
quiet blue eyes look frozen with, what – disbelief?
Struggling with words, perhaps she’s hoping
we can tell her what to think and feel. Despite
the pandemic, we all hug, and she cries, won’t
let go of our hands. She has our phone numbers,
we say, call if there’s anything we can do. Then,
continuing our journey, once again it’s a beautiful
Tuesday afternoon in early fall, the elms, maples
and sycamores lush with expectation. Their silence
feels earned, a source of profound comfort and faith.
Yes, here we are again, alone together, improvising
answers to questions waiting just down the street.
Philip Schultz is the author of eight poetry collections, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Failure and his most recent collection Luxury, which was published in 2018. He has also published a memoir titled My Dyslexia and a novel in verse titled The Wherewithal. Schultz is the founder and director of The Writers Studio, a private school for fiction and poetry writing with both in-person and online classes, featuring branches in New York City, San Francisco, Tucson, and Rome. He has received a James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, an American Academy of Arts & Letters Award, the Levison Prize from Poetry Magazine, and a National Book Award nomination. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Slate, Poetry Magazine, The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, and Five Points, among others, and he has received a Fulbright Fellowship in Poetry and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His new memoir Comforts of the Abyss: The Art of Persona Writing was published by W.W. Norton in 2022.
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Author: Philip Schultz
Philip Schultz is the author of eight poetry collections, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Failure and his most recent collection Luxury, which was published in 2018. He has also published a memoir titled My Dyslexia and a novel in verse titled The Wherewithal. Schultz is the founder and director of The Writers Studio, a private school for fiction and poetry writing with both in-person and online classes, featuring branches in New York City, San Francisco, Tucson, and Rome. He has received a James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, an American Academy of Arts & Letters Award, the Levison Prize from Poetry Magazine, and a National Book Award nomination. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Slate, Poetry Magazine, The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, and Five Points, among others, and he has received a Fulbright Fellowship in Poetry and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His new memoir Comforts of the Abyss: The Art of Persona Writing was published by W.W. Norton in 2022.
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