The Well of Failures

In dull April doldrums

I gather my many mistakes around me

like a charm of hummingbirds.

Each one opens a floating door in space,

a nimble, winged threshold—

each one offers a tiny, unlikely chance

to bound beyond the sordid cattle run

of rote and habit, to bound beyond that squalid hutch

of happenstance, the dead-ends of the underdone.

Imagine diving through such a door

as through a tear

in the fabric of normalcy and consistency

and finding oneself being led by wild bees

to an old, moss-bearded well buried in underbrush

where all your failures swim like wise salmon.

The Well of Failures goes

thousands of fathoms deep into storied earth,

drilled by gods of quake, oakfire and consequence.

It abides there to nourish all the forests’ children.

Are you one? Or are you another kind of orphan,

confused, vagrant stumbler

laughing into the name-stripping wind,

whose outsized appetites drove him hence?

Now imagine a badger hulks by the well-mouth,

eyes rich brown and unturnable.

He is the guardian here. He rips up your pretense

at sincerity like an expired passport

and tackles you handsomely

when you genuflect before the wrong god,

the one you made in your own image.

You are tumbled down the well’s black bone

into catastrophic depths

where surrender occurs because it has to—

where the human—held in a sacred making-ring

of bescorched stones—is made humble

made implacably whole.