Poets tell us of absence, and of kindness
Jill posted this and I knew immediately it had to join our Poemapalooza for National Poetry Month. It is a simple poem, it seems, yet there is so much there, around and through the words.
The Mower
The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.
I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:
Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful 
Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.
-Philip Larkin
[Mower image from here]
