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12/9/2021 6 Comments Poet's Petard # 10 – December 2021A Wish ListRecently a friend and I challenged each other with the question: “What's on your secret list of wishes right now, the one likely to make you the most happy?” Pretty simple and straightforward, right? Our only rule was nothing hugely impossible or vague. Doesn't have to be a material possession.Take advantage of this opportunity to be totally selfish. But be careful what you wish for. Right now I'd spend my wish on a room with a floor-to-ceiling window (at least 12 feet high) for this time of year, when the daylight hours are moving into the single digits. I would bask and bask. . . . Think about how foolish this question would have sounded to the wise and kindly centaur Cheiron who was born immortal like his fellow centaurs, but was shot by accident with a poison-tipped arrow from the bow of the hero Heracles. Cheiron couldn't wish his way out of this paradox – eternal life with a festering wound so painful that he finally chose the lesser of evils and petitioned the gods for the ability to die. His request was granted. Song-writer Soham Patel makes a choice (in her poem “Ultra Orator Spell”):
Lawrence Raab, similarly, goes out to the edge to find the center, in his poem Even Clearer:
Reginald Gibbons reminds us that whatever we wish for is always likely to be much larger than we could have imagined (from “After Mandelshtam”):
And Brenda Hillman, with the final stanza of her poem “Some Kinds of Forever Visit You,” granted another wish for me – one I didn't even know I had:
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