A friend of a friend
won the Stegner fellowship.
In a couple of months, he will amble
toward Stanford and begin a two-year
commitment to write poetry.
The world does not care. Only the
MFAs with pedigree are eligible
and only the ones with influence
are chosen.
It is a Publisher’s Clearinghouse
and they bought their way into the raffle.
The fellowship itself is a course in masonry
where they teach promising poets to wall
out what does not sound like they are writing.
And so they gather and mortar and I
am left here, typing on a blog for an
audience of one.
I can’t help but think that between
the geometry tests I am grading
and the Ludlum book I have yet
to finish, there was a moment
I too could have held a spade.
Great regrets are not taking advantage of opportunity.
Our greatest regrets are the moments we thought the opportunity was ever ours.
