Choose something

…And steadfast as Keats’ Eremite,
Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.

–Robert Frost, “Choose Something Like a Star”

The shootings at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas left me unsteady today.

For reasons that I do not understand, it was helpful, for a few minutes, to give myself over to Randall Thompson’s setting of “Choose Something Like a Star,” commissioned for the bicentennial of a Massachusetts town, and which I had once sung in choir.