This poem is from the remarkable first collection published by Adair at the age of 83. While she had written and published individual poems through most of her life, she had never chosen to collect them and attempt publication, until urged to do so by the poet Robert Mezey, who wrote the "Afterword" to Ants on the Melon. The book includes a series of poems (like this one) on her husband’s suicide in 1968 (see One Ordinary Evening in this database).