Dinner

by Meg Hutchinson

After all the eating was done
The last wine poured
And the candles had been blown out on the picnic table
Under the apple trees,
We crawled into our beds and
Slept the restless sleep of the Alaska King Salmon,
Struggling upstream

It is both terrible and obvious,
That the spirit of a creature
Should linger in its pale flesh,
Should inform our dreams

Swimming that long river
Against all odds
Towards the place of our birth.

Musical Contribution: “Yea Tho We Walk”

In Their Own Words

I wrote this song after flying in over the prisons at Eppley Airfield in Omaha, Nebraska. The plane was so low that I could clearly see the inmates out in the courtyard. I thought about how strange it must be for them to hear flights taking off over them all day long, to be haunted by that freedom. The Midwest has such a desolate beauty in the winter. Flying over that farmland I kept thinking of the bravery of the human spirit.

About

Meg Hutchinson grew up in a small town in the Berkshire hills of Western Massachusetts. She inherited her grandmother’s 1957 Martin guitar when she was in fifth grade and realized she should learn to play it. She studied poetry in college while working on a lettuce farm and dodging darts while singing in local bars. She was signed to folk label Red House Records in 2007 and with seven albums to her credit, has toured widely in the U.S, Ireland and the U.K. She has found that music is a wonderful tool for mental health advocacy work. She currently resides in Boston and is writing a children’s book.