Becoming Eighty

SO. . . The great gates of Kiev clang shut today
and wall me in. Or is it out? Depends
on where I stand, I guess. Well, I am here,
wherever that is, wondering: should I toss messages
over the wall? Or slip them under? Or even try
to send you any news at all?

Mary L Needham. A couple of years ago I completed the year-long Poetry Sequence of the UW Writer’s Program, my only formal study of poetry although I have loved it throughout my life. I am now eighty years old and continue to write, and read new poets, go to readings, and find poetry all around me waiting to be made into poems.