I have been reading stories and poems lately on cowbird.com,
a site that allows people to publish work they want to have others read and to
solicit readers’ comments. I have been a
“lurker” so far, just reading some of the “Daily stories” that come to me in
email. Yesterday’s poem, about the
fragility of everything around us, made me think how much my mother would have
enjoyed the freedom and access of the Internet.
Writing was a very personal, intimate thing for her—I don’t think she
would have put her work up for others to read very easily at all—but she would
have loved not having to wait for a book to arrive in order to read new work.
One of my mother’s most treasured affiliations, in her later
years,
