<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=us-ascii"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="margin: 0px; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;" class="">Why Regret?</div><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class=""> </p><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">Didn't you like the way the ants help</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">the peony globes open by eating the glue off?</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">Weren't you cheered to see the ironworkers</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">sitting on an I-beam dangling from a cable,</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">in a row, like starlings, eating lunch, maybe</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">baloney on white with fluorescent mustard?</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">Wasn't it a revelation to waggle</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">from the estuary all the way up the river,</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">the kill, the pirle, the run, the rent, the beck,</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">the sike barely trickling, to the shock of a spring?</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">Didn't you almost shiver, hearing book lice</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">clicking their sexual dissonance inside an old</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">Webster's New International, perhaps having just</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">eaten of it izle, xyster, and thalassacon?</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">Forget about becoming emaciated. Think of the wren</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">and how little flesh is needed to make a song.</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">Didn't it seem somehow familiar when the nymph</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">split open and the mayfly struggled free</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">and flew and perched and then its own back</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">broke open and the imago, the true adult,</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">somersaulted out and took flight, seeking</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">the swarm, mouth-parts vestigial,</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">alimentary canal come to a stop,</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">a day or hour left to find the desired one?</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">Or when Casanova took up the platter</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">of linguine in squid's ink and slid the stuff</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">out the window, telling his startled companion,</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">"The perfected lover does not eat."</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">Didn't you glimpse in the monarchs</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">what seemed your own inner blazonry</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">flapping and gliding, in desire, in the middle air?</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">Weren't you reassured to think these flimsy</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">hinged beings, and then their offspring,</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">and then their offspring's offspring, could</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">navigate, working in shifts, all the way to Mexico,</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">to the exact plot, perhaps the very tree,</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">by tracing the flair of the bodies of ancestors</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">who fell in this same migration a year ago?</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">Doesn't it outdo the pleasure of the brilliant concert</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">to wake in the night and find ourselves</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class="">holding hands in our sleep?</div><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class=""> </p><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;" class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- Galway Kinnell </div></body></html>