I suspected I shouldn’t
open the oven door
ten minutes before
the timer went off.
Is it a sin if you don’t
know the rule?
The cake looked perfect,
when I checked,
but ten minutes later
the puff of white had fallen,
fallen like Lucifer,
fallen into a dense sponge
from which it would never
again rise. Oh angel food cake,
victim of my impatience,
we ate you anyway,
served you with strawberry fluff,
and you, like a true angel,
stayed sweet. It was no fault
of your own that you fell.
How often am I responsible
for the so called failures
of others? How often
do I, in my excitement,
cause more harm than good?
Praise the fallen angel food cake,
that still, though compact,
offered itself to the birthday.
Praise what is good
that insists on its own goodness,
despite adverse circumstance.
Let me remember
the graceful botch,
the redeemable flop,
the crumb yet moist, so tasty.
