I looked back,and ten years ago
I wrote perhaps the thousandth poem
about the narrator’s emotional impenetrability
with the ironic twist suggesting said narrator’s
actual fragility all along.

It was not the last time the subject would be addressed,
not by a long shot.

Some veins are too rich
to not be continuously mined
for new wealth, as yet undiscovered.
Some miners are too poor
to give up on the old when they have
no new resources to call upon.

Even with other tricks in my bag,
I’ll still fall back on that one
with some regularity,
or variations of it.

But it is perhaps not so bad
to admit one’s frailty
nor to admit other weaknesses
nor to admit that one’s been at it
for more than ten fucking years.