My Dead Friends by Marie Howe
My Dead Friends
Marie HoweI have begun,
when I’m weary and can’t decide an answer to a bewildering questionto ask my dead friends for their opinion
and the answer is often immediate and clear.Should I take the job? Move to the city? Should I try to conceive a child
in my middle age?They stand in unison shaking their heads and smiling—whatever leads
to joy, they always answer,to more life and less worry. I look into the vase where Billy’s ashes were –
it’s green in there, a green vase,and I ask Billy if I should return the difficult phone call, and he says, yes.
Billy’s already gone through the frightening door,whatever he says, I’ll do.
MARGINALIA
I would ask my friends what I should do, but I know what they’ll say: You’re stupid, T., let him go.
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SHARED WITH GRATITUDE
This poem appeared in Poem-a-Day, 2022.
ABOUT MARIE HOWE
Marie Howe was born in 1950 in Rochester, New York. She worked as a newspaper reporter and teacher before receiving her MFA from Columbia University in 1983. Howe is the author of New and Selected Poems (W. W. Norton, 2024), winner of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; Magdalene (W. W. Norton, 2017), which was long-listed for the National Book Award; The Kingdom of Ordinary Time (W. W. Norton, 2009), which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; What the Living Do (W. W.… (more)
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ENDNOTES
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