D.S. Waldman

See, that’s the thing you’re not getting, the part

to call what happens in the world…or doesn’t

                                                    —that if my wish

a shout against all odds reaching the stage,

is heard, I’ll be wishing just as plainly

through the wreckage that it hadn’t been:

has drawn you close—to tweeze, maybe, to pick

you must have missed: like a burst of starlings,

regret, fierce and no longer contained by

                                                you tell them back.

Poetry