"Some quick folk dance of kindness": a poem by Michael Ryan
In the depths of an unkind February, I return to this poem, one I've long admired and often given to my students. I love how the poet, Michael Ryan, deftly mingles the melancholy feel of an early twilight with the hopelessness of an irretrievable love. That last line--the speaker's admission that he brought on his own bad luck--always pierces me like a pin prick. I particularly like how the poem sets up this idea by showing us those "gray women in stretch slacks" and their "quick folk dance of kindness," how we know without the poem saying so that the speaker regrets his own lack of kindness, knowing that if he'd shown a little more of it to his beloved she might still be with him In Winter At four o'clock it's dark. Today, looking out through dusk at three gray women in stretch slacks chatting in front of the post office, their steps left and right and back like some quick folk dance of kindness, I remembered the ...