And I go on to another little group of poems
I want to identify.
I received a request for certain poems,
and I'd like to do something about that.
I received a letter from a person
I know by correspondence, Michael Hogan, and he said,
there were certain poems he wished I'd read.
I'd like to respond to that.
Smuggled into the program at various places
are several of the poems he mentioned.
This just happened, but I have one
here that he took the trouble to send a copy of,
which I wasn't carrying with me.
It hasn't been in any book.
It was published in The Hampton-Sydney Poetry Review.
It's called "Accepting Surprise."
"The right mistakes, that rich moment when the rain finds you,
a pinch from a branch in the hedge
that tells you you're real, the wrong turn
that spills whole sunsets reflected and still
on a lake at a dead end barring your road,
there are these doubled ways, returns beyond even dreams.
Mothers, fathers, your lives flash in the pain and out,
but maverick rainbows blind us all.
I bring you and your children a whole treasure, mistakes
like jewels, the hidden rush and loss of a world that
throbs beyond control.
Good, good, never quite ours."
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