If you're like us, right now you're holed up inside, praising the inventor of air conditioner.

By which we mean, it's very, very, VERY hot outside right now.

To take your mind off the prospect of walking across the surface of the sun on the way home, today's Poetry Friday entry has been specially chosen to give you a lot to mull over while you melt into the concrete.

Please enjoy Gary Geddes' intriguingly titled "Mahatma Gandhi Refuses an Invitation to Write for Reader's Digest" (from Active Trading).

We have a dual purpose behind our choice for today's Poetry Friday entry. First, we are celebrating Gary Geddes' recent win of the 2018 Freedom to Read Award. Geddes has written/edited over 40 books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction — including, of course, his six collections with Goose Lane — and this recognition of a body of work that promotes free expression is another feather in a cap very much laden with them.

Secondly: while much of his 1998 collection Flying Blind is a poetic treatise on Israeli-Palestinian relations, we're more concerned with another of his poems, one that has much in common with our current situation, viz.: we're trapped in yet another Atlantic Canada blizzard.  

With that all said, let us take a moment, sit back, and let Gary Geddes guide us through the storm.