I prefer to think of my quirks and foibles, mistakes,
gauche remarks and errors of judgment simply
as ways I tested the world – a life-long experiment,
gathering data that now, as I sidle towards senility,
can be analyzed with multivariate analysis, complex
statistical methods, or just old-fashioned common sense.
The apparently highly significant conclusion
is that my life is riddled with fault lines.
No wonder there were earthquakes, subsidence,
dip-slips and strike-slips. Not vices per se but
natural phenomena, Mother Nature expressing herself
while hoping that I would learn to serve smoothly,
find love.
Sylvia Byrne Pollack’s poems appear in Floating Bridge Review, Crab Creek Review, Clover, and other print and online journals. She is a two-time Pushcart nominee and was a 2019 Jack Straw Writer. Her full-length collection, “Risking It,” is forthcoming from Red Mountain Press in 2021.
