Poem for the week: "The Bigger Picture"

The Bigger Picture

“All we have is hope, but what hope is there?”

wrote the great dystopian author, winner of

the Booker and darling of all dystopians, her

Medusa hair and cold stare turning readers

into stone; I could never warm up to her until

I saw the bigger picture, the other side of every

story, and dear, dear Peggy (please pardon the

impertinence), Queen Dystopia, saw life through

the shadow eyes of who she was not: “There is

no hard and determined central personality, just

as you’re going to be a different person when

you’re 80 than you are now,” she said 32 years

ago in a CBC interview with Hana Gardner,

while I saw the world through the eyes of who

I was meant to be, my true self; and today, all

these many years later (she’ll be 80 November

18), she’s still fighting nihilism and despair, as

she wrote in her Booker Prize-winning novel,

and me joyful in my wholeness, I’ve come

 to respect her dystopian point of view,

because it’s also true.