I started to write this poem because I actually wanted
to write an essay on shyness.
And never quite got to that stage.
But I'd taken a lot of notes about it.
It's called Shy.
We even breathed shyly.
Envying everybody their courage and finesse.
Everybody's boldness a little inebriated.
But even drunk, we had no nerve.
We were patient, much too patient, like old men
and over rehearsed frowners, fishermen
who for hours practiced fly casting in the park.
Each cast erasing the future of streams and flame spotted trout.
We could have asked for risks.
But blushed at our clumsiness, our imperfections
like lamps of oil lit just beneath the skin.
Shamefaced, rosy, reddened.
Look, look.
There must have been many hours like coal mines, very
dark and confusing, dripping, and quiet, and cold, which
required that light.
We outfitted ourselves with modesty and doubt.
Delighted to be mispronouncing words, mangling our speech.
Whole days lived as if caught dreaming
beneath an elm in light rain, where the sidewalk remains dry
reliving some disgrace or humiliation
simple as absent mindedness.
Because what would shyness have been without shyness?
Without it, there might have been calm.
The green of the elm no longer ruffling leaves.
The street quiet, the motorbikes and cars
banished with the sudden grace of dolphins,
and the rain ended, a lull in which a mouse might pause,
about to devour a live cat, playing with it
for just a while longer.