Today it’s blessing fine enough I did
not fall and break my favorite crystal vase,
I did not choke, nor lose my daughter’s place
in her new chapter book. I didn’t trip
on fallen logs while running, did not flip
my car. I didn’t die, did not replace
my toothpaste with the Preparation H,
I didn’t drop a baby, didn’t slip.
And as for that sweet thing you didn’t say
that I had wished you might have said, it’s so
okay, that detail seems extremely small
amidst these other blessings of the day,
it’s no big deal you didn’t say it—no
big deal. I barely noticed it at all.
*If this looks familiar, it is … it’s an older poem I turned into a sonnet …
I should remember it but I don’t, though I like it here in this form. Italian, I think, and it holds up nicely to the form. So old style in figure, so contemporary in language. I don’t think Petrarch could have conceived of a rhyme for Preparation H :>)
a zing and a snap and an ouch of a poem. this little lie ain’t white. oh no. it’s quite dark. and you used the sonnet form that’s typically used for romance and the like, thereby zinging and snapping and ouching even moreso. i can still hear the crack of the bullpen, smell the sizzle of the ink on the page.