I wrote a mournful little litany of things I was sorry for today – for botching a conversation with my son and a paint scraping job in the bathroom; for missing the game night tonight, which I wanted to attend but realized, when we were thick in paint chips and insulation dust at 6:30, that it wasn’t going to happen.  But though it made me appropriately weepy to write it, I wasn’t willing to let it stand.  This pep talk came to my rescue when I broke a fingernail.  Its rhyme and rhythm saved me.

My sorries yawn like caverns in clouds across the sky

gray on gray, dark stretching mouths that moan and fly

and gobble joys and happy memories

and fling down rain, and petty miseries

Get over it! For what can it avail

to be caught up in all the things that fail

a missed good bye, a broken fingernail?

It’s your choice if the darkness will prevail.

So I cajole myself, for so I hope to rally

To float beyond the mournful, moping tally

of all the things I did that came to grief

(all three of them!) it is beyond belief

that you would let such trifles win the day

Go write a poem, and let them drift away.