Vox Populi
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James Crews: After Receiving Bad News from a Friend
for Paula Gordon Lepp
Malignant: a word with too many
syllables, too much density
in the mouth. A word no one wants.
And yet, it comes like any
unwelcome visitor, with a knock
at the door we’d rather ignore
but cannot. I think of my friend
handing me a jar of muscadine
and grape jelly last summer,
spreading that deep purple sweetness
across a piece of toasted sourdough
and tasting the sun now trapped
in each bite. How I am still feasting
on the labor of her love, that old
family recipe passed down through
the generations. Maybe any misfortune,
unlocks life’s truest instruction,
which is to simply be right here
for each other, to share the light
our bodies already know how to store
and turn into food. To offer what we can,
even when a friend lives far away,
to say: I will hold you inside myself
as you pass through this new gate.
I will walk with you, giving whatever
love I have preserved for this moment.
~~~~
Copyright 2026 James Crews
James Crews’s many books include Breathing Room: Poems of Rest and Retreat (Mandala, 2026). His work has been awarded the Prairie Schooner Prize and Cowles Prize. He has also been featured in The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, Ploughshares, and The Sun Magazine.
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“I will hold you inside myself as you walk through this new gate” This line, this poem, speaks to me so perfectly. I have a dear friend with Alzheimer’s, and I try to see if when possible (she lives a few hours from me) and comfort her when she calls. I know soon she will not remember how to use her phone, not remember me.
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Thanks, Valerie. I’m 72 and still healthy and alert, but it’s clear that I don’t have a lot of time left.
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Dear James faithfully has the “right words in the right order” to comfort body and soul.
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Terrific poem, James!!
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Speaking of “even when a friend lives far away”—We’ve been held by and lived in your light now only at the cost of coming to know and reading you. You’re the laden tree to us—planted in a corner of the yard, grown and left to flourish—and that’s what has come of these latter days. Now we can’t remember when we didn’t have this loveliness, this agreeable blessing in our world that is the heart and spirit of James Crews.
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