Lesson one: start with fruit, or some dark hidden root; lesson two:
Instill it in neglect, some long, drawn-out time, 
preferably in a barrel, wooden and unforgiving. Lesson three:
Qualify everything. Add a dose of sugar now and then 
to keep it on its toes,
Uncertain where the next blow is coming from. 
Oxygen-deprived, it will ferment: finally give it air, 
a mother with acid on her tongue. Lesson five:
Ration water, let it thirst. It will seek its own, 
find its fountain of eau de vie.
Slip in oil in equal parts, make a dressing, measured
and anointed, say grace in the final hour.

Clearing out thirty-two years 
of stuff I found the paper 
yellowing in the nightstand drawer. 
 
Carefully typed depressions
where the keys struck skin,
laying out my credentials,
 
hoping to appeal, it failed 
to win the job 
but brought me you.
 
And now two kids, more than 
three decades gone by, I remember
how we sat, side by side,
 
waiting for U2 to come onstage: 
you under a rough blanket 
with laryngitis, whispering 
possibility, me sandwiched 
 
between you
and the hanging thread 
of another failed relationship.
 
What came next a mix 
of projection and hope, 
then the wearing thin of it.
 
Now we've stalled too long, 
found our engines once again,
formulate a new wish.
 
The resumé stays in the drawer, 
folded like lost futures,
food for silverfish.