Seventy Feet from the Magnolia Blossom by Jane Mead

Seventy Feet from the Magnolia Blossom
Jane Mead

there is an ant.

He is carrying
a heavy load.

We should help him

SELECTED BY ANDREA COHEN

Twenty words, including the title. But why the compulsion to count how many? As if the size of the ant mattered. What’s of consequence is how much an ant can do, what a poet, paying attention, is capable of.

I love Jane Mead’s poems, and I loved the poet. And writing this now, I’m thinking of walking with her and her dogs at her ranch on Atlas Mountain, making slow loops around the vineyard, standing still to ask: What happens with all this, after you’re gone? We had no idea then of what was to come. Mostly what we know is that endings arrive. And while we still can we ought to notice the loads of others.

We should help him.

ABOUT ANDREA COHEN

Andrea Cohen’s poems and stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Threepenny Review, The New York Review of Books, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, Glimmer Train, etc. A new poetry collection, Sugar, will be out in early 2026. Other books include The Sorrow Apartments (Four Way Books, 2024), Everything (Four Way, 2021), Nightshade (Four Way, 2019). Unfathoming (Four Way, 2017), Furs Not Mine (Four Way, 2015), Kentucky Derby (Salmon Poetry, 2011), Long Division (Salmon Poetry, 2009), and The Cartographer’s Vacation (Owl Creek Press, 1999).