A Dream Defeated

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.