“Good answers are wasted on a fool”

–Ann Carson, Dionysos, Bakkhi

 

Often when I look up from my work

lost in thought, I can suddenly see

with a transformed clarity. I shake

my head as if I could align my

thought with the banal world around me,

like a child peering through a knot hole

in a fence tries to see the wider

world beyond his parental control.

I have no answers for the questions

I am too slow to ask. I’ve wasted

days disentangling the tedious

explanations of fools who believe

if they plod through their expositions

one more time, stopping along the way

to dissect each obvious point, then

I will arrive at the mistake they

metastasized into long ago.

But I don’t, and I am way too tired

to answer why, too worn from shaking

the same tree to find the exact fruit

they will refuse, once again, to eat.

So, I shift my eyes and go along,

blithely humming my discordant song.

 

(April 4, 2018)