As part of the 2021 Dear Poet project, students around the country and the world wrote letters to Margaret Gibson in response to a video of her reading her poem “It Doesn't Take Much” aloud. Margaret Gibson wrote letters back to seven of these students; their letters and her replies are included below.
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Dear Margaret Gibson 2021
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From Gabriela, Grade 11
Dear Margaret Gibson,
When I was a little girl, my grandparents told me that cardinals were angels. I thought that they meant the St. Louis Cardinals, because they are natives of St. Louis and ardent baseball fans, but they corrected me: whenever you see a cardinal land on a branch, it’s an angel trying to talk to you. And I’ve never been especially superstitious, but this is one of the few tales that I do believe, for every time a prominent figure in my life has died, a cardinal comes to visit me before I hear the news. So now, whenever I see a cardinal, I have to imagine what it is they’re trying to say. Perhaps they need to tell me something that they never got to tell me, or perhaps they need to give me advice, or perhaps they just want to check on me.
“It Doesn’t Take Much” reminded me of the cardinals. I’d imagine that, were the frog a cardinal, instead of saying “How did it get here? Why did it die?” I may think Who is that? Why are they here? And then I have to tell myself stories, trying to think of what someone may need to say to me. Maybe PawPaw is trying to wish me luck on my competition. Or maybe Grandpa Norval just wanted to check on me. But then, just like you did with the frog, I have to leave it and go about my day, but the encounters seldom leave my mind as quickly as I leave the tree. I wonder, did you think about the frog that day? Turning the possible intentions of its visit over and over in your head? I certainly would have. And I would have started to remember things, about the people I miss, about the things I never did with them, about the things I never told them.
When angels come to me, I think about the lessons that those I’ve lost would want to teach me. “When death arrives on your door stone,” what do you think about? And when I leave the angels, I am forced to remember times in my own life and all of the times I have yet to have. “When death turns out to be life, injured life,” how do you “turn back to your own”?
Sincerely,
Gabriela
Dear Gabriela,
What a question you ask at the close of your letter to me! “When death turns out to be life,” (you write, echoing lines in the last stanza of my poem “It Doesn’t Take Much”) “how do you turn back to your own?”
Perhaps a partial answer is that we simply must return to our own lives, because that’s where we find the way to respond to the unbidden experiences that come to us. It’s in my life that I turn back, able now to pay a greater attention to my own life, and I take the frog with me (so to speak), keeping it in mind, paying closer attention—and finally turning to poetry to distill my thoughts. Finally, the completed poem moves on back into the world, to others. The poem reached you, a very sensitive reader!
There is always the choice to turn back to your own life and ignore the experience that’s arrived at the front door. But you can also learn from it.
You must be grateful indeed for the messenger cardinals that come to you. I’m glad your grandparents to told you cardinals were angels, because you’ve certainly learned to pay close attention to how they arrive in your life at deep and important moments. Your response is to ask questions, to imagine the story or message the cardinals bring. That they arrive at times when someone you love has died makes the moment deeper, more compelling. And, I’m guessing, their arrival makes you feel less alone. As you turn their visits over in your head, you start remembering those who have died, and so the cardinals (angels) allow you to be again in the presence of your loved ones.
By telling you that cardinals are angels, your grandparents gave you the gift of metaphor, a way of seeing more deeply, a way of making connections and paying attention to the smallest details of your life. And what a gift that is.
Thank you for writing to me.
For now,
Margaret Gibson
From Sulhai, Grade 11
Dear Margaret Gibson,
Hi! My name is Sulhai. I’m an 11th-grade student from Los Angeles, California. I read and listen to your poem “It Doesn't Take Much”, and I spent a good hour trying to figure it out. I love reading and writing, I enjoy poems, but I’m the type of person who over-thinks and looks for a deeper meaning in literature. It’s weird, but after I finish reading something, I will literally spend days thinking about it. In third grade I fell in love with a book by Lucy Montgomery, “Anne of Green Gables'' and I remember spending a lot of time trying to find a deeper message, I tried to relate it to my life and I even had a conversation with my elementary school’s librarian about it. The thing with literature is that it can be life-changing. I still think of “Anne of Green Gables”. Literature can and will stick with you till death. On the topic of death, your poem, kind of. At first, I was like “Why is the author talking about a dead frog” and “How sad”, because no one, or at least me, likes seeing a dead animal. Then you asked “How did it get there? How did it die” and you realized that “it doesn't take much [to see] how little [you] know about the simplest things”, and when I read those lines I had a moment of “THAT IS SO TRUE!”, and me, being me, and my “searching for a deeper meaning,” self thought about the simple things I don't know much about. Things like your purpose in life and passion seem like such simple things, right? Everyone around me seems to have a purpose in life. I asked my mom, and she said that “it's to provide a better future for [my] sister and [I]”, which I’m guessing is true, right? She immigrated to this country for a better life and opportunities for my siblings and I, so it has to be that. But why? WHY?. “Why?” is a question I am always asking myself. I heard that it's great to question everything, but I’ve also been told to stop questioning everything and live life. But how am I supposed to live life if death is so close? We are all walking on thin ice that divides life and death. Like the frog in your poem. Frogs are always on alert. They're always jumping, and to have one at your feet, dead, is sad. You can't help but ask yourself “How?”, which is exactly what you did in this poem. After realizing that the frog was dead you decide to set it aside, to be buried later, which is sadder. My dogs killed a possum a few months ago, I couldn't help but feel sad and guilty. I’m usually an emotional person, especially when it comes to animals. I couldn't help but feel like it was my fault that the possum’s future was no more. I don't know why. But after some crying and apologizing (Yes, I apologized to a dead possum), I buried it in my backyard. I just felt like it needed a final resting place. And maybe that’s what you wanted the frog to have, too. But then you realized that the frog was alive. I mean wow. And then you freed the frog into the pond. Wow. And then you write “When death arrives on your door stone, you think about it/When death turns out to be life, injured life, you’re glad./And turn back to your own.”, and those lines are my golden line(s). It's true that when death happens you think about it. I’ve never had anyone super close to me pass away, but people have passed away. In 2015, my dad’s father, my grandfather, passed away. I didn't know him well, I was a year old the last time I saw him. Growing up, I talked to him on the phone a few times, but other than that, nothing. But at 11 years old, I was crying because I had lost someone, although I didn't know, meant a lot to me, in a way. It doesn't make sense, I know. But I remember that my grandfather had recently gotten sick and he had gotten a risky surgery that worsened everything. I remember my mom talking to my dad’s sister. She told my mom that the doctors didn't give my grandfather much time left to live. I remember seeing a photo of my grandfather at the hospital, it was traumatic, he had tubes up his nose and everywhere, he looked so fragile. It was a lot for me to take in at 11 years old. I remember my dad talking on the phone with him in his last days. My dad isn't the type of person to show much emotion, and I remember it weirded me out to see him so “fine”. He didn't cry. I remember I was crying. My dad was speaking to his father for the last time, and I was in the background crying. I didn't understand why my dad wasn't showing sadness. He knew that his dad’s days were coming to an end and he couldn't be there with him. I remember the night my mom got the call from my dad’s sister, informing us that my grandfather passed away. I remember waking up in the middle of the night and crying. I remember the look on my dad’s face. I remember waking up the next day and being so confused. I couldn't help but feel regretful. I regretted not talking to him more often. I regretted all those times that I ran away from my dad, so he wouldn’t pass me the phone to talk to him. I don't know why his death affected the way it did.
In the poem, you say “When death turns out to be life, injured life, you’re glad./And turn back to your own.” and I don't quite understand what you mean. By “injured life” do you mean near-death events? Maybe almost dying? Maybe life support? I don't know. But then you say that “you're glad” when it's that and I understand that, sort of. You’re glad that whoever you are talking about isn't dead so “[you] turn back to your own '', and I also sort of understand that. Someone is on the brink of death and then they don't die, so it's a relief, but then you soon forget about that and continue living your life. What do you mean by this? Should we always have death in the back of our minds? I know I do. I think of death too often. I always ask myself , “If you were to die right now, would you be content with the way you lived your life”. I think remembering that one day you're going to die is important. I think that that's the reason why I want to live life to the fullest. (YOLO). I don't want to die having regrets, I think that that's one of my biggest fears in life. I think that his poem makes you reflect on how close we are to death and how we are walking on thin ice.
I really enjoyed your poem. And I promise you that it will linger in the back of my mind for a while, maybe the rest of my life. I would like to know why you wrote this. What is YOUR meaning behind it? Is my interpretation close? Or is it way off? Do you have any advice for me?
Again, I loved reading and listening to you read your poem. Thank you for writing it. Thank you for publishing it. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Sincerely,
Sulhai
Dear Sulhai,
I really appreciate your writing such a full response to my poem “It Doesn’t Take Much.” It’s good to hear that you let poems spend enough time in your mind that the words and images generate questions and memories of your own, because that’s what makes poetry so rich. A poem isn’t simply information; the words and images in a poem invite reflection and imagination, expanding inside the reader, who enriches the poem by linking it to his or her own experience. I’d say you don’t “over-think” a poem. Seems to me you let a poem magnify and enrich your own experience, letting thoughts link up to your feelings and your feelings to memories and questions. That’s called a full response.
I love it that you apologized to that possum. That response indicates how you value your life and the lives of others. (I have apologized to possums, birds, rabbits, snakes, spiders, friends and family members—and to myself on occasion.) At the end of my poem, the speaker turns back to her own life—by implication her own injured life, glad the frog has a chance to live, perhaps glad she does also. We are all in this web of life together, and as human beings who are responsible for the global climate crisis that is upon us, we have the choice to either repair and restore the earth’s climate—or to ignore it and therefore create more injury to ourselves and to so many other species. Frogs are dying out—that means they’re warning us of something wrong in the environment, and that’s why I wondered in the poem if the frog were an “ambassador from the wetland world.” I would only add the climate change aspect of this poem to your otherwise very full response.
Thank you for writing to me about your love for your grandfather. When families live at a physical distance from each other, it’s difficult to get to know all the family members well, isn’t it? And how interesting and complex it is, how differently people experience their grief. Some of us weep easily; others of us, even those who feel deeply, keep their feeling to themselves, out of discipline perhaps or out of a need for privacy. And sometimes you feel so much, you need to ask questions, right?
Just as there’s no life that doesn’t experience injury, there’s no life that doesn’t include death. In the way I look at it, death is a part of life in all its wholeness, its fullness. That may sound odd, but thinking that way, I can relax from that feeling of walking on thin ice and just get on with living a full life, making friends with my fears, offering as much back to life as life offers me. That may be a reason I write poems—to give back.
It’s nearly impossible not to notice how much in a life is impermanent. Awareness and acceptance of that impermanence can make one fearful, but how much better if that awareness makes you enjoy each moment fully—and also makes you resolve not to injure, if possible. It sounds to me as if you are one of those who relish life and are sensitive to the needs of others. Thank you so much for writing to me. I’m glad you and your family have come to this country. L.A. and the woods of CT are so different! And yet poems bridge many kinds of distance.
Thank you, Sulhai, for writing to me.
For now,
Margaret Gibson
From Hayden, Grade 5
Dear Margaret Gibson,
My name is Hayden and I am from Newtown, CT. I was drawn in by your poem, “It Doesn’t Take Much”, and thrilled to learn that you are the poet laureate of Connecticut!
The imagery in your poem, such as “a blossom of blood on the stone”, connected burgeoning life and certain death. Your detailed description of the frog allowed me to relate to it and feel as the person who found it would have. Are you the person who found it? Is this poem modeled after an event in your life?
I wonder what you meant by “Or is the dead frog an ambassador sent from the wetland world?” Was the injured frog a warning, something to pull our attention and teach us. Maybe you are meaning a symbol of climate change? Further, it may be about humans’ need to learn about our world and the balance of all living things. I can relate to your sentiment, “It doesn’t take much to make me see how little I know about the simplest things.”
I noticed that, on the written version of your poem, the lines “And so I carry the frog”, as well as, “And turn back to your own.” were indented more than the other lines. Why is this? Do you have any poem-writing techniques or suggestions?
At the end of your poem, I found myself in reflective silence: “When death arrives on your door stone, you think about it. When death turns out to be life, injured life, you’re glad. And turn back to your own.” This may mean that the person who found the frog was consumed with thoughts about it when they found it to be dead. The frog was able to transition from a symbol of hopelessness to one of hope, even fragile hope, as the brown bag began to jump. Hope can be freeing. Now that they see that the frog has life, they return to thinking about themselves, thinking about their own life, perhaps their own fragile existence, and the time that they have. I wonder what you were intending it to mean?
After dusk, as the human world is drawing a quiet curtain on the day, nature is reaching a crescendo. I regularly listen for any of the 11 species of Connecticut frogs at a nearby wetland, and record my findings. The care required to learn the frog calls and listen for individual sounds reminds of the care that the person in your poem took to not ignore that single frog. When I hear a loud chorus of spring peepers, it is nearly impossible to pick out any individual voices. Each of those frogs is somehow less “significant”, even though they are still each calling out for their individual needs. Who would know if one or maybe even tens of them were snatched up by a voracious raptor? In comparison, hearing a pickerel frog is like a pearl found on the muddy shores. There are only a few, sometimes even just one lonely creaking door croak. I hold my breath, imagining its transparent, stretched out vocal sac, like a balloon about to pop, as I await its music...its guiro-like call. If a snake ate that one pickerel frog, I would keep listening and listening for that call that had ceased from existence. Like the frog on your door stone, why can the gravity of one pull us so powerfully?
After reading your poem, I was inspired to write a poem about something similar that I experienced:
Silent Squawk
A happy nest of squawking, slimy,
V-shaped mouths
await food from their mother,
while tiny, silent, puff of down lies
far below,
neglected by sister and brother.
We approach the sporadic chirping,
quietly,
pick it up and hoist it high,
back to the nest where it belongs,
still silent,
is there room for it to occupy?
A day later, the baby again pushed
to the dirt;
louder than redundant noise above,
we hear its tiny, hushed, pleas,
pick it up,
bring it where it will be loved.
Here even as the fittest we
were appalled
by survival of the fittest; we were compelled,
to have sympathy for and help those
who were weak,
who were hurt and could not rescue themselves.
Thank you for the inspiration,
Hayden
Dear Hayden,
What a wonderful letter you wrote to me—so many good observations and questions about my poem “It Doesn’t Take Much”—and then you included a poem of your own, which I’m glad you sent to me! Thank you for that rare gift of being a reader of a poem who replies with a poem.
I’ll go through your letter from beginning to end, hoping to reply to your responses and queries.
I live in a clearing in the woods, on what was once farmland in CT, and there’s a pond not too far from the house. I, too, listen to frogs daily, when the bullfrogs croak, when the pickerel frogs cry out in early spring, and of course to the chorale of tree frogs at night. When I opened the front door one morning, there on the door stone was the injured—dead, I thought—frog, stretched out long, just as the poem describes. I didn’t do much revision. Essentially, it was one of those rare poems that gives itself to you quickly.
There was a “blossom” of blood on the stone—the splotch was faint, its shape and delicacy reminding me of a small rose. You’re so right to note that blossom connotes burgeoning life, whereas blood and stone suggests mortality and death. I’m reminded, as I write to you now, that I used to wear an old Egyptian button made of bone. Carved on the bone was a five-petalled flower. I used to wear it on a narrow black cord around my throat. As it turns out, I often give voice in my poems to the impermanence of burgeoning life. I’m a poet with an elegiac eye.
You’re correct in your response to the frog as “an ambassador from the wetland world.” We humans tend to think of ourselves as separate from the natural world. In that way of thinking, all other beings on earth come from a “separate country,” and nations appoint and send ambassadors. The metaphor points out this tendency of our species to think we’re separate—and more important. As Poet Laureate of CT, I’ve taken the greening of poetry in a time of global climate crisis as a theme to my term as a laureate, concerned that all of us need to raise our voices and speak out and find remedy for that crisis. Because frogs are dying out, they may well be ambassadors, whose mission is to give warning.
You asked about two instances of “indented” lines in the poem. I call them “dropped down” lines, and they usually occur within a stanza when I’m using the placement of lines to create a pause, a moment of reflection, but don’t want that moment to seem distant from the preceding thought that occasions the pause. One line (“And so I carry the frog”) occurs following the shock of realizing the dead frog isn’t dead—the bag’s moving around with lively energy. So there’s a pause to honor that surprise, just before I recover and take the frog down to the pond.
The second indentation or dropped down line is the final one. One IS glad when what was thought to be dead turns out to be alive. “When death turns out to be life, injured life/ you’re glad.” The distinction (alive, but injured) is important. There’s joy and relief that the frog is alive, but also an awareness of remaining injury. My hope is that the dropped down line creates enough of a contemplative pause that the last line of the poem (“And turn back to your own”) will be understood to mean that we do go back to our own lives, but to our own injured lives. That may suggest that we take the injuries of others to heart, and it may also suggest that we are implicated in the injury global climate crisis will create. No one lives without suffering injury of some sort. What’s crucial is our response to injury, how we change ourselves in response to it, how we embrace life—or ignore it, or continue to disturb it. That you found yourself in a reflective silence at the end of the poem is just what the poem hopes for—and the indented line may have had a part in creating that response.
Thank you for telling me about your experience in observing frogs, your responses to peepers who sing in multitudes, and to pickerels which croak singularly. I love it that you’re out there looking and listening and documenting what you find—and writing poems. You asked about why one might respond more deeply to the disappearance of the single pickerel frog more than to the absence of a few tree frogs all singing together. I’m not sure. Perhaps the voice of that one frog makes you feel as if the pickerel is calling out from its one life to your one life? Perhaps it’s easier to have a relationship, even an imagined one, with one being than it is to relate to a crowd of them? If so, maybe that’s why I was so touched by the one frog on my one door stone at that one moment when I opened the door and discovered it. But its singularity multiplies and becomes representative of all of life, doesn’t it? We’re not separate.
Thank you for your fine poem “Silent Squawk.” I respond to the speaker’s persistent attempts to have the silent, weaker baby bird recognized and fed by its mother. I particularly value how you (the speaker of the poem) could listen through all the squawking of the stronger birds and “hear” the silence of the neglected, the overlooked one. The poem demonstrates also a keen sense of line. In each stanza a shorter line isolates key ideas: “far below,” “quietly,” “pick it up,” “were appalled.” The short lines neatly make in internal commentary that underscores the speaker’s sensitivity to those “far below” and needing rescue.
Stay inspired, Hayden. The source of inspiration are in the midst of our everyday lives.
For now,
Margaret Gibson
From Hope, Grade 12
Dear Margaret Gibson:
My name is Hope, and I am currently an unlucky senior trying to graduate and move forward into a world plagued by a virus. Although the year hasn’t been as eventful as planned, I did end up “adopting” two frogs, Tom and Jerry. Your poem, “It Doesn't Take Much”, stood out to me because of the connection to my passion for the goofy amphibians, but quickly I realized it stayed with me for more reasons than that. After you came across the frog, you questioned what you know about the simplest forms of life. At the pause in the poem, I looked up and studied the two creatures swimming in a tank across from me, what do I know about life’s simple questions? Do I even know if my frogs are content, hungry, tired? I assume this pause was intentionally for a moment of silent contemplation, and if so, I fell right into its trap. After continuing on, I again slowly fell into pensive silence at the last two stanzas, and then abruptly at the last line. When a living being is alive but suffering, we praise its breath and continue on with ourselves, but at what point does this mimic our own actions? Every human struggles with their own sufferings that cause blood to seep onto the stone, whether these injuries are physical or mental. In regards to taking care of our mental health, it is much easier to simply praise that we are alive and continue on instead of addressing the issue. Except, at what point is that suppressed suffering the same as confinement in a brown paper bag? Of course, that question is hard to digest when we don’t even have answers to life’s simple questions.
Although this poem seems more casual, it carries a quite deeper meaning. The depth of the poem is what my favorite part was, and I feel like I would want to start writing poetry just to convey the same complex meanings. What led you to starting poetry? What led you to writing this poem, was that interaction a true story? If it was, at what point did you want to turn it into inspiration for a poem? I also liked the addition about your dog and his “keen nose,” was there a deeper meaning to this line? You said that when “death arrives” “you think about it”, what are your own thoughts when faced with death? Do you question the parts of your own life that may seem broken or bleeding? And lastly, I have to ask, do you like frogs?
Sincerely,
Hope
Dear Hope,
I’ll take your last question first. . . Yes, I do indeed like frogs, your “goofy amphibians”—what a great adjective goofy is for frogs! I don’t have frogs as pets, but there’s a pond, or frog hotel, down the hill from my house, which is surrounded by woods. It’s a little like living on an island, with trees all around me instead of ocean. I love the solitude here and the beauty of this place, and I spend a lot of time paying attention to frogs, owls, coyotes, and a black snake that lives in the periwinkle around the house.
From writing poetry I have learned to slow down—not every question yields a quick answer. Clarity takes time and patient watchfulness—rather like waiting a while to see the bird you know is up there in the tree, hidden in all that green. Eventually, it shows itself.
I love your question, “At what point is suppressed suffering like confinement in a paper bag.” In terms of the poem, you gave me a new angle of vision. There I was, thinking I’m sensitively handling a dead frog, keeping it away from my dog (with his keen nose: no symbolism! just a fact) and actually, I’m confining the yet alive but injured creature, unintentionally creating a prison. Your awareness that suffering is both physical and mental, (also spiritual and emotional) is also keen. Poetry has often functioned for poets as a lens to magnify and examine what is hidden or unexamined. Attention to sensory detail in a poem is the seedbed of metaphor, and metaphor, it seems to me, reveals how the writer sees the world, suffers in it and/or finds joy in it, how the writer reaches out or retreats from others.
Living in solitude (not alone, but in a cultivated inner solitude) allows for concentration and focus and a steady faith that the examined life, as the ancient Greeks said, is best. Distractions are fewer in solitude and the possibilities of knowing oneself and learning to love oneself—and then others—are richer.
You asked about my thoughts “when faced with death.” When I was a child my mother talked a lot about death, and I listened and absorbed what she said, with fear and wonder. Maybe some of the things that worried her or hurt her I wasn’t old enough to understand, but somehow my compass got set, and I’ve spent a lot of time (there are so many elegies in my books) thinking about death. I think that this ability to take on grief with imagination and whole-heartedness has released me from fear and left me more fully alive. I hope so!
I don’t know why I became a poet. I do know that writing poems makes me pay attention to what’s around me and within me; it heightens concentration and deepens awareness. And then there’s the sheer joy of verbal expression. Writing poems is wonderfully rewarding work—I mean the work itself, not publication, although that’s also a pleasure. I can’t imagine my life without poetry in it. It’s not so much why I decided to be a poet; it’s why I stayed with the practice of writing, the habit of it. Writing poems makes life richer.
The poem “It Doesn’t Take Much” is indeed about an event that literally happened. The initial questions—“How did it get here? Why did it die”—occurred to me as I found the frog on my door stone. As you notice, the questions are very literal (this frog on my door stone, dead: how? why?) but there’s also a ring to them that applies to our lives as well. Birth is a mystery and so is death. Perhaps the moment I stood there, not-knowing, was the moment the need to write the poem began—an inspiration that begins with not-knowing and continues as inquiry and observation, both inner and outer. Sustained inquiry is the real work for which I am so grateful.
There is always injury, sometimes death; but there is also more life.
Thank you for your questions and for your responses to my poem. Thank you for writing to me.
For now,
Margaret Gibson
From Lakelan, Grade 10
Dear Margaret Gibson,
My name is Lakelan, I’m a sophomore this year in highschool. In my creative writing class we were assigned an assignment where we had to choose a favorite poem off of poets.org. I chose your poem “It Doesn’t Take Much” as my favorite. I have a few reasons why I did that, firstly you are a phenomenal poet. The elements of the poem were beautiful and I love the way it flowed.
One of my favorite animals is the frog. I love the way they look, they are just little creatures that eat bugs all day and hop around. I find them very cute and funny. I actually have a frog promise ring that I was gifted by someone important in my life. I connected with your poem as soon as a frog was mentioned. The personal meaning and other parts about the poem really stood out to me.
I like to save animals if they happen to be injured and need help. Though my parents never appreciated my work I liked to try my hardest. I was no veterinarian unfortunately, a lot of the things I tried to save either died or my parents made me release back outside. I wish I had an animal that had survived like your frog did.
There is a part in your poem where you ponder on the cause of death of this frog. I tend to think about things like that as well. As I mentioned before I tried to rescue animals as a child and I would ask myself what happened to this poor animal. I went camping once and found a baby squirrel on the road. It was barely alive so I took it back to the cabin. We kept trying to figure out what was wrong with it. I was just told it was sick and the mother abandoned it. I just stuck with that, we truly will never know what really happened but we can imagine it all we want.
We buried that squirrel when it died later that day. It didn’t have a chance to survive, we didn’t see it then but my parents knew. Nothing could be done about it but a burial. You came to that same conclusion when you found the frog, you didn’t bother to leave it there like I didn’t bother to leave the squirrel.
I currently am pondering on the part of your poem that says, “When death arrives at your door stone, you think about it. When death turns out to be life, injured life, you’re glad.” I am trying to figure out what it means to me. Currently I am losing someone I love dearly, she doesn’t have long. I am stuck thinking about death constantly, it has arrived at my doorstep but not for me. Though she isn’t gone she has an injured life, I don’t know if I am glad yet. I am not sure if I would rather have a suffering injured creature brought back, I think I would rather just have them be gone. Though that sentence depends on who it is. If it were someone who has a chance of living and surviving I think that I would be glad if they came back from death.
Death is a funny thing isn’t it? We go our entire lives waiting for it, yet we never truly know when it will hit. We could be here today and gone tomorrow. Or like the frog we could be here one minute, then gone, and back again, because sometimes death isn’t ready for us. We wait for it like it is the next stop on a train or like it is thousands of years away. So unexpected and yet inevitable. We can try to live life so carefully but no matter what we do we could be snatched up, like a frog by a hawk, and then be gone.
Your poem truly connected with me and I was inspired. I myself want to be a writer or a poet. Something along those lines is what I want to do. I hope to read more of your poems one day.
Sincerely,
Lakelan
Dear Lakelan,
The first response I had to finding a frog dead on my doorstone was “How did it get here?” The second was, “How did it die?” On a literal level, the frog was a long way from the pond down the hill, where surely it lived. How did it come uphill, all that way, and land on my door stone? And it was a beautiful frog, no evident injury, just “a blossom of blood on the stone.”
But the questions are ones that, on a deeper level, are existential. We don’t know how we got here (birth) any more than we know how we’ll die, or when. Your letter echoes those questions, both on a literal level and on the deeper one.
Thank you for telling me stories about the injured animals you tried to save. Thank you for letting me know that there is someone in your life now who is sick, possibly dying. You must be wanting to help, to reach out: a very compassionate response. And you keep asking questions about how to respond to illness or injury, what to wish for, and discovering that what we want is for the suffering to stop. And yes, what’s odd about death is the mystery of it. We don’t know much about it, do we? Perhaps it’s precisely that not knowing that allows us to live with more gratitude and care, for ourselves and for others.
I think I write poems in part because I, too, don’t like “getting stuck, thinking about it.” To write, to allow words to take me more deeply into an experience, is also to release that experience into meaning and beauty, to find a way to reach out to others. Poems help me respond more fully to the world, so that when I leave the page and return to my life, I’m changed, enlarged by the experience, wanting to share it with another. Poems can transform injury into healing, loneliness into the deeper solitude that allows for a richer life with others.
Yes, do take up writing poems. It will change your life.
Thank you for writing to me.
For now,
Margaret Gibson
From Noah, Grade 12
Dear Margaret Gibson,
Reading your poem, It doesn’t take much, made me think about my life growing up surrounded by animals. I have lived on a farm for 13 years. I have seen many miraculous events happen to my animals. One such event is when our chicken named “Penny” got her leg caught in a raccoon trap and we had to amputate her foot. My family thought Penny would never be able to live with the rest of the flock, so we moved her in with our goats. Penny by all accounts should have not been able to walk again but after some time Penny was up and walking around. Penny stayed around for years raising many chicks.
Through my years with animals, I have had times when our animals got hurt and were able to pull through and be alright. Many times, we tried our hardest to help, but they did not get better. Our last goat died trying to give birth to twins. She had complications and the twins died in the womb. We had to put her to sleep because she was unable to give birth. My family has also tried to save many wild animals that we find on our property. We found a baby rabbit with a broken leg, we thought he was going to live but we were wrong, and he passed away overnight. Another time was when we tried to save a baby bird but he too passed overnight when we thought he was in the clear.
That is why your last 5 lines “When death arrives on your door stone, you think about it. When death turns out to be life, injured life, you’re glad. And turn back to your own.” are so true. We will have many living things in our lifetime, people that we love, pets that we adore, and others that we might not even know at all, die during our life.
In the last four years of my 17 years on this earth, I have had many people in my life die. Some I have loved, some that I did not like, and others that I did not know personally, that died and I was still affected by their deaths. After reading your Poem and through my own experience, I have learned an incredibly sad and especially important lesson that all people will see and know death throughout their lives. Even though we see death we must keep moving forward and remember them and the lessons that they have taught us.
Sincerely,
Noah
Dear Noah,
Thank you for writing to me about your personal experiences with dying or injured animals on what sounds like your family’s farm. I think you are in part able to relate to the lines in my poem (“When death arrives on your door stone/you think about it.”) because you’d had direct experience yourself, and that experience opened your heart to a truth—we humans will indeed see and know death in our lifetimes, no matter how hard we try to heal or prevent injury. This truth—and it includes knowledge of our own eventual deaths—can lead to the growth of compassion and to an appreciation of live in all its forms. It sounds to me as if you are cultivating that compassion in your life now. Certainly, compassion for others who are suffering is one of the great themes of human life—and that’s why it appears in so many poems and stories. As a writer and a poet, I am pleased, and touched, that my poem awakened important memories in you—and that you took the time to tell me! A poem is never really completed until it is read and taken into another’s mind and heart and deepened by imagination and memory. And so, thank you for completing my poem!
The Earth during this time of climate crisis needs our compassion and whatever remedy we can offer. The injured frog in my poem (as a possible “ambassador from the wetland world”) reminded me not only of the natural order of impermanence but also of the injured animals and birds and beings on this earth, ourselves included, who are vulnerable to the global warming and climate change we are causing. Death is part of life, but whenever we find ourselves implicated in the death or suffering of others, then we have to open our hearts to making changes.
I am so glad that you have had the luck to live close to the creatures of this earth. Again, my gratitude to you for writing to me.
For now,
Margaret Gibson
From Roman, Grade 10
Dear Ms. Gibson,
My name is Roman, and I am a sophomore at OPRF High School in Oak Park, Illinois. I’m writing to you about your poem “It Doesn’t Take Much” because the fleeting image of life and unknowns of death hit closer to me right now than ever.
Last summer I was diagnosed with leukemia leading me to ask questions similar to those you pose when finding death on your doorstep, not taking much to “make me see how little I know about the simplest things in life.” Every aspect of life seems so much more fragile when contrasted with the harsh reality of death. I still spend time wondering why I have been faced with mortality in the way that I have, and my situation isn’t even all that serious compared to what other illnesses and hardships people face throughout their lives. For me, questioning the order of the universe, wondering why something happens the way that it does became all the more difficult when I had to be faced with these thoughts constantly, because it became difficult to let go and “turn back to my own.” For you, was there some deeper event in your life that caused you to write about mortality, or was it really just finding a seemingly dead frog on your porch? Like you said, it doesn’t take much to move someone to those reflections about death, but we often just find a way to snap back into our normal routine. We don’t continue to think of the little wounded animals we find in our backyards, so I’m curious, was there something else that moved you to write this poem?
Do you think that this human ability to find happiness and return to normal can be a detriment? Would more people find a larger meaning in life if they weren’t so quick to move on from loss no matter how trivial it might seem? Or is it better that we just move on and look for hope in the future? I know that for myself, if and when I do make a full recovery, I don’t want to move on and forget about my experiences. I want to be able to provide the same opportunities in life for other people who may be in a situation even less fortunate than mine, which I guess is finding my own light at the end of the tunnel as you did finding life at the end of the poem.
Anyway, I’m sorry if this comes off as rambling, but thank you so much for writing this poem and helping me to put more thought into life, not taking the simple things for granted.
Sincerely,
Roman
Dear Roman,
Thank you for taking the time to write to me about my poem “It Doesn’t Take Much,” especially now when you are experiencing a serious illness. I am hopeful that this reply finds you healing steadily. Healing occurs on so many levels, physical and mental, emotional, spiritual. Healing radiates deep possibility.
You ask if my poem arose from an experience deeper than that of finding a frog dead (or as it turned out, injured) on my door stone. The specific poem arose from that discovery, of course, and included a faithful accounting of my responses—my wondering how it got there, how it died, and my sense of how little I know about the simplest things. How little we know as well about the mystery of birth, the mystery of how life sustains itself, the mystery of death. My concerns about humanly caused global climate crisis is certainly in the background of the poem, inspiring the line that asks if the frog is “an ambassador from the wetland world.” But these immediate responses are, I think, grounded as well in a long familiarity with death and dying.
My mother and father and only sibling all died within a year and a half of each other. Since then, my late husband suffered with Alzheimer’s disease for eleven years. An incurable illness, Alzheimer’s also robs memory and cognitive function. As David’s caregiver for those years, I experienced intimately the gradual process of loss, grieving those losses along the way, adjusting to how we might continue to communicate and relate as his language loss became nearly total. We were blessed with the experience of discovering that in all this loss and grieving, love deepened. It actually did, and we were able to be present to each other in so many non-verbal ways. And some verbal ones, too. During his illness, I wrote poems—he read the ones that became the book Broken Cup, but he lost the ability to read before the poems that became Not Hearing the Wood Thrush were written. A new book, The Glass Globe (the last in this trilogy) offers poems written after his death, poems of personal grief that are balanced by poems of environmental grief. Living with imminent loss daily made me experience and live through what my Zen practice has emphasized, an authentic appreciation for the gift of impermanence. So it doesn’t take much for me to sense larger questions about life and death in the seemingly smallest of incidents, in part because the greater losses—personal and environmental—are always there now, with me, asking for an intimate and fearless response. I find that writing poems allows me to make that response more fully. And then I try to live what the poems themselves teach me.
Thank you for writing to me. It’s not often that poets know who their readers are, especially when there’s physical distance as a separation. Your letter overcame that distance. Thank you for writing so openly. I will hold you in my heart.
For now,
Margaret Gibson
From Tah-Teana, Grade 12
Dear Margaret Gibson,
My name is Tah-Teana, and I’m a senior at Durfee High School in Fall River, MA. I have a twin sister, and I just bought the cutest hamster ever! I named her after 2Pac. Your poem “It doesn’t take much ”stood out to me as part of the Dear Poet Project because when I wake up every morning I think that my betta fish Swim Shady is dead.
Swim Shady is a great fish, He’s this very pretty pink shade and matches the little fake coral centerpiece in his tank. I think of him as a very lazy fish because he either is sleeping all day or really good at playing freeze. Which constantly has me examining the tank to make sure he's all good. I think he likes the attention. I can really relate to when you said, “But when I come for it, /the paper bag rustling, is jumping / -- alive!” Swim Shady does this to me all the time. And I get so scared because I do not want to flush him down the toilet.
At the end of the poem, you talk about turning back to your “injured life” after you realized the frog was alive after all. I think that we all live an “injured life” and sometimes you play dead so no one will talk to you or check up on you. But then that certain person comes out of nowhere and checks up on you and makes sure you are okay. You were that certain person to the frog. That made sure his injured life was okay. And I feel like everyone needs that type of person in their life. When we feel so alone and nobody is with us. You come in at our lowest points and make sure we are okay and living. And to a lot of people that means the world.
So me and you are kind of the same. I don't check on Swim Shady just because he is my fish. I check on him because I care and I love to help. Which is such an amazing quality to have. I do it with my friends and my family, too.
So next time you save an injured life, I will be on my way to help.
Thank you,
Tah-Teana
Dear Tah-Teana,
I just love how you shared so much of your life with me! Thank you for reading my poem, “It Doesn’t Take Much,” and for writing to me. I think your sister and your hamster and certainly Swim Shady are very lucky to have you in their lives. You must have a gift for helping others out when they need it. Caring for others can lead to such a rich life—as a nurse or doctor, as a teacher or counsellor, as a family member and a friend. Caring for others can also make a person aware of the injury others endure, whether that injury is social or environmental. I thank you for thinking of me as a helpful person, but thank you also for recognizing your own gifts, and for offering to “be there” for me, on your way to help.
For the last two days I’ve been taking care of my little gray cat, whose name is Clara because she has such clear eyes—and I value clarity. Writing poems often helps me be clear about complicated experiences. Clara, my cat, is presently very sick. She had stopped eating and drinking water, and she’s still “not out of the woods” as her doctor says. I have been getting her to eat by putting a little food on my finger, and then she licks it off. As I write this she is on the bed, curled up next to my foot, sleeping.
Writing poems has come to be a way to explore thoughts and feelings, to weave together details of an ordinary life to share with others. Poems help us see, they encourage us to love, they help us grieve. They help us to know ourselves and to be fearless. Whatever you decide to do, I hope you will remember poetry and include it in your life as your go about helping others.
Thank you for writing to me.
For now,
Margaret Gibson