☀ Today's Poem: "Evening Traffic" Bret Shepard

Today's Headline: "Massachusetts Poet Laureate Position Created by Governor"

February 12, 2025 Evening Traffic Bret Shepard Some caribou take place with late hunger. If death is the mind out of season, you hunt the sound of what it was in the melt-filled space outside. You hear it beneath the lowest tempo of need. You find it in your nature. Lost on the trails of others, lost in reflection most nights—memories like the melt that was once ice. What is lost outside moves without you. The sound is one track playing hours of your inside voice. from the book ABSENT HERE / University of Pittsburgh Press READ ABOUT TODAY'S POEM Share Tweet Forward I used to think if you tracked something carefully enough, maybe part of it would remain—footprints, echoes, a way forward. Maybe tracking is a kind of disappearance, a way of listening to what has already moved beyond reach. Maybe the mind hunts not to find, but to stay in the motion of what was never meant to stay. Bret Shepard on "Evening Traffic" Today's Sponsor The 12th Annual Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference June 15 to 21, 2025 Some spots still available in poetry! Work with our award-winning faculty in the heart of Vermont’s Green Mountains for a week of inspiring workshops, lectures, classes, and readings. Financial aid is available. Rolling admissions through February 14th or until spots fill. Apply Now "Massachusetts Poet Laureate Position Created by Governor" "On Monday, February 3, Governor Maura Healey signed an Executive Order creating the position of Poet Laureate for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The Executive Order adopts much of the language of a bill filed years ago by former State Representative Denise Provost. Provost’s work was recognized by Governor Healey at Monday’s celebratory signing." viaTHE SOMERVILLE TIMES READ ALL TODAY'S HEADLINES What Sparks Poetry: Farid Matuk on Language as Form "I wanted this work to be accountable, to not settle for easy truisms about ambiguity or a lack of closure being liberatory or even interesting. I wanted, more than I had before, to risk being right or wrong or foolish or earnest or stylized. I don't know who to face, but in wanting to be accountable the poems call—a bit desperately, really—to readers I can't yet see. My ambition was to create across each poem and again across the book a complex of feelings, sometimes contradictory feelings, that would get at what's irreconcilable about the real." READ THIS WEEK'S ISSUE donate View in browser You have received this email because you submitted your email address at www.poems.com. If you would like to unsubscribe please click here. © 2025 Poetry Daily, Poetry Daily, MS 3E4, 4400 University Dr., Fairfax, VA 22030 Design by the Binding Agency

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