For John On His First Frustration Poem by RIC BASTASA

let me draw you a house
with an entrance gate
leading to an entrance
door and some windows
to let in air.

just that, there will be no
exit doors, no exit gate,
all the windows open,
not designed to close,

that precisely is success
and failure.
there is a sense of
entrance triumphant
ditto an exit for some
ordinary and even
inevitable failures of
our lives.

the windows are some
of our other options, we
let in air to breathe
for a while. we must.