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.

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.