Copyright © 2017 by Ann Lauterbach. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 3, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.
To foretell an ordinary mission, with fewer words.
With fewer, more ordinary, words.
Words of one syllable, for example.
For example: step and sleeve.
These are two favorites, among many.
Many can be found if I look closely.
But even if I look closely, surely a word is not
necessarily here, in the foreground.
I see an edge of a paper, I see orange.
I see words and I see things. An old story,
nothing to foretell the ordinary mission.
I see “her winter” and I see
And even the Romans fear her by now.
Are these words in
translation or barriers to translation?
I see John and an open book, open to a day
in August. I am feeling defeated
among these sights, as if I will never find
either sleeve or step. These ordinary
pleasurable words, attached to
ordinary pleasurable things, as if
to find them is to say I am
announcing criteria. Step, sleeve,
you are invited to come up and be within
ordinary necessities. Staircase. Coat.
Copyright © 2013 by Ann Lauterbach. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on September 23, 2013. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.