Indian Pipes Look, I said, Indian pipes, flowers for ghosts. You stopped to gather a few of the livid blooms, then we went on through deepening woods. You walk there still— ghost flowers withering in your hands, long since a ghost. Robert Hayden

View from bed 605b. It’s my birthday and I’m going home.

Coleridge on the metrical unit — ‘at first the offspring of passion and then the adopted children of power’

C.S.Lewis on the Vorticists and other poetry matters. From his collected letters. 😉

Thanks 🙏 to Opaat Press for keeping my poetry light shining while I’m mostly reading papers about this rare cancer thing I seem to have. (There I’ve said it somewhat publicly). Support small presses! annickmacaskill.com/2025/03/02/opa…

Stevie Smith, newly clothed in this edition, but no less sharp and funny.

Thanks to the editors of THINK for publishing this in their latest — which I’m not sure will find its way across the border to my mailbox. I thank another contributor for sending these along. For context, Brewer’s Retail was the name of the provincial run beer store in Ontario.

My gratitude to THINK for including a poem of mine in the new issue - a poem which is scrupulously accurate in recording what my 5 year old said in his sleep one night.

A bit of music, a hot iron, a can of spray starch —and before I know it a half hour without worry.

Look closely — some woman mended this old cotton apron. We need to take care of our things, take care of each other.

A fine one.

The story of my 1st cancer is a long one — ovarian, a sr. tutor at the university, Gerry Tomany (I wish I could find him) brought a copy of John Donne’s poetry to me in the hospital. So now all years later, with 2 new, different cancer diagnoses I turn to Donne. My heart, full.

Happy

Those rhymes tho 🤯 Villanell-icious

Me saying farewell to my team of extraordinary engineers and human beings at Workday. One week left. Hashtag #notgoodbye