From the List of My Fears

--Robert Wood Lynn

       

We were, once again, Orpheus's incompetence.

We found everything we wanted in the past

but couldn't bring it with us. We made the same

mistake we always do. We were okay anyhow

so we did not become wiser. Instead, we were

made holy by the persistent foghorn.

Or the foghorn's persistence, we weren't sure which.

We were made beautiful by the act of looking

each other in the mirror and asking if we were

beautiful. We were made hopeful by grass growing

clandestine on the roof. We were alive, most the time.

We were the lingering compromise living made

of the day. We chased groundhogs out of the barn

and for this we apologized profusely to each other

but not, for some reason, to the groundhogs.

This much I loved, like the tenderness of asking

for a favor without saying what it is first.