2025-07-29 I Inquiry I Continuous Mistakes I Joel Barna

Here is the poem by Hilda Raz, reflecting on a time when she was the poet laureate of Nebraska and did some teaching about poetry in public schools. I hope you will search out her book "Letter from a Place I Have Never Been." Diction ~ Hilda Raz "God is in the details," I tell the kids in the public school at Milligan, Nebraska. They wonder what I mean. I tell them to look out the window at the spring fields the mud coming up just to the knee of the small pig in the far pasture. They tell me it's not a knee but a hock and I hadn't ought to say things I know nothing about. I say the light on the mud is pure chalcedony. They say the mud killed two cows over the weekend. I tell them the pig is alive and the spring trees are standing in a green haze. The tell me school is out in a week and they have to plant. The grain elevator at the end of Main Street stretches out her blue arms. The kids say chutes.