Molly Fisk: Clichés of Our Times

I am not so blessed or so not blessed, being a lapsed

Unitarian who believes only in oaks and sunlight,

nor am I honored, a once-bright thought now sunk

into meaninglessness on everyone’s lips, one of so many

clichés of our times, and I certainly don’t deserve anything,

good or bad, a ridiculous notion, as if we could bend fate

in our own hands. What happens is merely what happens.

We manufacture the stories after, to make proper sense

of the random world, but they confer blame on the innocent,

by and large they serve us ill. All that counts in the end

is practice, letting whatever come closer in, sitting beside

those trusted friends: the delightful and the unacceptable,

busted fan belt in evening traffic, the diagnosis, that sudden,

unexpected, dreamed-of poetry prize, the lottery win.

Copyright 2018 Molly Fisk