When They Die We Change Our Minds About Them
When they die we change our minds about them. While they live we see the plenty hard they’re trying, to be a star, or nice, or wise, and so we do not quite believe them. When they die, suddenly they are what they claimed. Turns out, that’s what one of those looks like. The cold war over manner of manly or mission is over. Same person, same facts and acts, just now a quiet brain stem. We no longer begrudge his or her stupid luck. When they die we change our minds about them. I will try to believe while you yet breathe.
Credit
Copyright © 2014 by Jennifer Michael Hecht. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on April 22, 2014. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.
About this Poem
“A lot of my poems are the first expression of something I’ve been thinking about for years. It takes years to notice I’m wondering and then years to think of speaking it, then one day I sit down to write poetry and somehow say it. It’s great because now I can think about it more vividly. In this case, when people die—friends or famous—we may see them differently, but why does each side seem truer than the other?” — Jennifer Michael Hecht
Author
Jennifer Michael Hecht
Jennifer Michael Hecht is a historian and poet. She is the author of three poetry collections: Who Said (Copper Canyon Press, 2013); Funny (University of Wisconsin Press, 2005), winner of the 2005 Felix Pollak Prize; and The Next Ancient World (Tupelo Press, 2001), winner of the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award and the Tupelo Press Judge’s Prize in Poetry.
Date Published
04/22/2014