Kay Ryan: Bitter Pill

A bitter pill
doesn’t need
to be swallowed
to work. Just
reading your name
on the bottle
does the trick.
As though there
were some anti–
placebo effect.
As though the
self were eager
to be wrecked.

Kay Ryan: Things Shouldn’t Be So Hard

A life should leave
deep tracks:
ruts where she
went out and back
to get the mail
or move the hose
around the yard;
where she used to
stand before the sink,
a worn-out place;
beneath her hand
the china knobs
rubbed down to
white pastilles;
the switch she
used to feel for
in the dark
almost erased.
Her things should
keep her marks.
The passage
of a life should show;
it should abrade.
And when life stops,
a certain space–
however small–
should be left scarred
by the grand and
damaging parade.
Things shouldn’t be so hard.

Kay Ryan: Patience

Patience is
wider than one
once envisioned,
with ribbons
of rivers
and distant 
ranges and 
tasks undertaken
and finished
with modest 

relish by
natives in their
native dress.
Who would
have guessed
it possible
that waiting
is sustainable—
a place with
its own harvests.
Or that in
time's fullness
the diamonds
of patience
couldn't be
distinguished
from the genuine
in brilliance
or hardness.