I Think of Kevin Prufer's National Anthem While Watching The Walking Dead

Beside the Dying Fire, We Do as We've Always Done

Around that time, the city grew quiet.

You said Don't hurt me and I said If I was going to hurt you I'd have done it already.

We passed a dying store with gem-like windows. A door that banged in the wind. You said Let me go.

As in a film of the apocalypse, a breath of newspapers blew past us.

I won't hurt you, I said.

—KEVIN PRUFER, from “Apocalypse”

My mother recently discovered the glory of Netflix and has been making her way through The Walking Dead. As a longtime fan, I love hearing her experience the characters and their struggles anew. The other day she called me as I was strolling through the well-stocked aisles of Target (that red-and-white symbol of capitalist, first-world, everything-is-ok safety) to talk about Hershel Greene (played by Scott Wilson), the stubborn, patriarchal farmer the group first encounters in season two.

"It's so ridiculous," she said on the other end of the line. "He doesn't want to kill the zombies because he thinks he can save them. He's hauling their snapping corpses out of the swamp and keeping them in a barn. I mean, come on!"