Sometimes

Sometimes things don’t go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail.
Sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man; decide they care
enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow,
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.

I encountered this poem the other night in Good Poems, the book I gave Jon and he promptly gave back to me. The world stopped for a moment. I had to hear it again. And again.

I Googled the author to learn more about her, and found that she has come to hate this poem. She dislikes it so much she has taken it off her website, and asked people who quote it to leave her name out of it. Apparently she thought it was pretty good at some point, because it got published. But I suppose as she grew in her craft, her view turned around, and she rues the day she wrote it.

So, apologetic author of Sometimes, I will comply with your wishes, but remain an admirer of your chaff. Mediocrity not only has its place, it can sometimes be a godsend.