February 2, 2021

if all else fails

Today I am here to write a poem, and if not that, to make a good-looking cheese platter, 
and if not that, to join the neighborhood cookie swap, or watch a squadron of ducks 
chattering at the shoreline, and if not that, to dream of crowded rooms and tight squeezes 
and wake, grateful, with a kitten at my feet, and if not that, for the call with my mother 
in which we discuss, among other things, her photographs of trees, and if not that, 
I am here to keep my father alive through a recipe for French crepes, and if not that, to fail
at the squat challenge and to learn how to call failure by a different name, and if not that,
I am here to keep time, and to lose it, and to raise the pompoms and call the shots and 
blow the whistle, and if not that, I am here to fall down and get hurt, and then 
to find the sponge and the soap, and if all else fails, the tenderness.