I’ll get the hang of it soon.
Learn a trade well enough
To support me through
The bad and the beautiful,
Denying me nothing but a fate
I choose without choice.
Hell, I’m this close to cracking
The code dispensed at birth,
If I could only remember
A name, a number, a word—
Some item to get me sailing
In the proper direction,
Before dawn’s early light.
Must I be so far off-course
I’ve missed the buoys
Others navigate with ease?
Yes, I’m almost out of time,
Leaving the wind behind—
Unless I catch as catch can.
Bart Edelman’s poetry collections include Crossing the Hackensack (Prometheus Press), Under Damaris’ Dress (Lightning Publications), The Alphabet of Love (Red Hen Press), The Gentle Man (Red Hen Press), The Last Mojito (Red Hen Press), The Geographer’s Wife (Red Hen Press), Whistling to Trick the Wind (Meadowlark Press), and This Body Is Never at Rest: New and Selected Poems 1993 – 2023 (Meadowlark Press). He has taught at Glendale College, where he edited Eclipse, a literary journal, and, most recently, in the MFA program at Antioch University, Los Angeles. His work has been widely anthologized in textbooks published by City Lights Books, Etruscan Press, Fountainhead Press, Harcourt Brace, Longman, McGraw-Hill, Prentice Hall, Simon & Schuster, Thomson/Heinle, the University of Iowa Press, Wadsworth, and others. He lives in Pasadena, California.
