October Poem

What is the best poem you ever wrote in your whole life?
I ask a friend of mine, aged six, and she thinks about this
For a whole minute, looking down in the grass for words,
And she says, The time I tried to make a coat for a mouse
From spider-webs. My sister and brothers helped me find
The webs. It takes a lot of webs to make a jacket for mice.
We apologized to the spiders. This was in October. Mama
Said we could borrow webs as long as we were respectful.
That’s the best poem I ever wrote, and I didn’t do it alone.

—Brian Doyle