Ron Padgett was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1942. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including You Never Know, Bean Spasms (with Ted Berrigan), and Poems I Guess I Wrote... More >
A second ago my heart thump went
and I thought, "This would be a bad time
to have a heart attack and die, in the
middle of a poem," then took comfort
in the idea that no one I have ever heard
of has ever died in the middle of writing
a poem, just as birds never die in mid-flight.
I think.