Some Days

Some days I want to
tell the newscasters
I don’t want to know about
the brown-eyed little girl missing from
her home in Chicago or
about the couple whose car
slipped on black ice and fell into
the cold Rogue River.
They were on their way to see
their first grandson.
I don’t want to hear about the woman
in Scio whose doublewide trailer
held forty cats in various states
of starvation.
Don’t show me photos of her
two skinny horses
standing big-eyed
in the muddy yard.
Tell me some good news
or at least give me something
I can fix.
Or ask me for my favorite recipe
or you tell me yours—
the one for chicken and dumplings
handed down from one grandmother
to the next to the next,
the ones who never heard about
that bridge collapse one county over.