To Virginia on March 28th

by Meg Hutchinson

On this day, in 1941, you left the letter on your desk
You picked the perfect stone
And while the German bombers roared low over your house
You trudged down to that East Sussex river
And you walked in;

Spring is a strange time for despair
The whole world begs you to celebrate
And your pale life shimmers like an empty shell
Pocket of madness, pocket of rocks, pocket of brilliance

I’ve heard that in MRI’s of people with bipolar
There are pockets of light which the doctors have not named
They call them simply UBO’s
Unidentifiable bright objects

This is what you are, a plucked snowdrop floating downstream
A splinter of light on the water
A container too small for so much joy, for so much sorrow

This is the disease
To be an instrument too tiny for so loud a song
So that the playing destroys you
Breaks your strings
Cracks your wood to the very core

I think of you today, silver fish
Forever making your way to the sea.

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.