Episode #172 A Time - Allison Adelle Hedge Coke

Connor and Jack have a time talking about the poem "A Time" by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke. She is a multi-award winning poet whose latest book-length poem "Look at This Blue" is on the short list for the 2022 National Book Award. Come for the poetry analysis, stay for the discussion of red wolves, climate crisis, Tolkein, impermanence, and diectic words.

You can read the poem, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/89060/a-time-570d716c13a77

A Time

By: Allison Adelle Hedge Coke

The problem—

it’s not been written yet, the omens:

the headless owl, the bobcat struck,

the red wolf where she could not be.

None of it done and yet it’s over.

Nothing yet

of night when she called me closer

asked me to bring her crow painting

to stay straight across from her feet

so she could waken into it,

remember her friend.

Of Old Chief alongside her shoulder

still watching over her

just as the mountain had done

throughout her Alberta childhood.

The Pendleton shroud bearing our braids,

her figure in flaming pyre.

The cards, the notes, the tasks

the things undone, not done

and she with us faraway

as this has always been and ever

will continue.

We meet we leave

we meld and vaporize from whatever

it was that held us human

in this life.

And all the beautiful things

that lead our thoughts and give us reason

remain despite the leaving and

all I know is what you know

when it is over said and done

it was a time

and there was never enough of it.

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