I wrote a poem yesterday
and today thought
“How nice. Perhaps I shall do it again!”
Once, there was a day
when that was not a rare thing to say.
I’d not have bothered to utter the words
so obvious were they
but now
it seemed almost breathtaking an accomplishment.

I knew what I was going to write about:
the brevity of our institutions in America
which in the hands of an artist
isn’t as lame a subject as it sounds.
Mine are not the hands of an artist
anymore.

What I wrote was didactic and divisive
to say nothing of dumb.
It wasn’t a poem.
It was a waste of time.

I had failed to write poems on consecutive days
just as I used to do
so frequently.
I am sorry to have raised expectations.