Always there is that cloud that sifts over the sun: do I lead the life I should be leading? Such a trite question and always unanswerable. Are the details worth the sum? Does affection create damage? I suppose these questions are what drive me to write poems because poems don't require me to answer them, only to ask and re-ask them. Same old story, in other words. Same old story.

I'll spend today prepping for a high school visit, copyediting a manuscript, dealing with reprint permissions, washing clothes, driving a boy to piano lessons, cleaning out my herb garden, rehearsing with the band . . . doesn't my day sound worthwhile? And yet what good does it do? Don't answer that question. There isn't any answer.

Someone told me recently, "If nothing else, you're a coper." Coping how? I wondered. And with what? And then I didn't want to think any more about what my friend meant by that remark.

There's cowardice for you . . . though of course coping requires a blind eye. Or a blinded one.

What would Shakespeare say? Perhaps

Here the street is narrow;
The throng that follows Caesar at the heels,
Of senators, or praetors, or common suitors,
Will crowd a feeble man almost to death.

On the other hand, perhaps "There is no special providence in the fall of a sparrow" or "Patience herself would startle at this letter, / And play the swaggerer."