Paschal moon: fifty percent terrible

Today’s entry for National Poetry Month comes from a woman who was trying to find words to explain the dangers of the world to her young children, and to give them hope, as well.

In the summer of 2016, a writer named Maggie Smith sat down at a coffee shop in Ohio and wrote “Good Bones” on a yellow legal pad. Three days after the mass murders at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, it was published in the literary journal Waxwing, and went viral (not something that often happens to things published in literary journals), because it expressed the pain and bewilderment of the world—in 2016 and since.

I think we should hold this one close, during these times.

“Good Bones”

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.

Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine

in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,

a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways

I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least

fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative

estimate, though I keep this from my children.

For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.

For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,

sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world

is at least half terrible, and for every kind

stranger, there is one who would break you,

though I keep this from my children. I am trying

to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,

walking you through a real shithole, chirps on

about good bones: This place could be beautiful,

right? You could make this place beautiful.