On my way to an appointment this morning, Garrison Keillor’s “Writer’s Almanac” kept me company.  It is Annie Proulx’s birthday today, as well as Dorothy Parker’s, who, Mr. Keillor told his listeners, was kicked out of Catholic school for labeling the immaculate conception “spontaneous combustion”. Great listening for this runaway Catholic. I arrived at my destination and sat there with my car idling, waiting for the morning’s poem. It was five minutes before 9. I could run my car for five more minutes and listen to one of my favorite radio voices for a little while longer, then hear that same voice read the poem of the day. It would be about love and death and love and death and love and death, as all poems are, and would, no doubt, give me goosebumps and maybe make me cry some. I looked at the green hill in front of me and thought about my car farting deadly gases into the atmosphere of this beautiful blue and green ball we live on. It was not an easy decision, but I turned off the car and read the poem later online.