We visited our friend the poet Mary Kellogg yesterday, she is recovering from a broken hip in an adult care facility in Granville, N.Y. We asked her if she was in much pain, and if she missed her farm, and she said the hip was getting better. Then she tapped her heart and said softly, “it hurts in here.”

Mary is 88, and she understands that broken hips are not simple to heal at her age. Mary has always defied conventional norms about age, but some things are even bigger than her great heart.

We are moving ahead to publish Maria’s as yet unnamed fourth book of poetry, and she gave Mary and I a poem she wrote in September of 2009, and we are putting in her next as yet unnamed book, which we hope Mary will read at our October Open House.

The poe is called Isolation:

“Wind sucks breath of life

in relentless grasp of land,

poking nose into cracks and crevices

seeking to chill beyond borders.

snow ferrets its way to hiss in the hearth

seeking steam from the warming fire

fingers of warmth dance and ignore the interruption.

smallest of little creatures

exiled beat a path beneath the snow

search warm tunnels,

for cache of seeds.

barnyard dwellers

press backs to the storm

muster strength

to defeat the stinging whip of ice

screen of white

erases pines and meadow

twisting to devour

a lost swimmer searching for light

how the trout must wonder

at their ice glass ceiling.”

 

— Mary Kellogg, September 09

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Mary enjoys receiving your letters and messages. You can write her care of Mary Kellogg, Room 2 C; The Holbrook Adult Home, 73 North Street, Granville, N.Y., 12832.