Rule One
Philip Booth
Rule One of all
rules one:
No one ever knows
how much another hurts.
You.
Kate. Ray. Randall. Me.
The nurses
who were kind to you, the gaspump kid
across the bridge, the waitress here
this noon.
No one ever knows.
Or maybe in a thousand, one
has the toughness to,
to care,
to give beyond a selfish pity. Even
any given day,
given weathers, detours,
chances of what look like luck,
if we feel bad
we refuse the givens.
What blighted lives we lead.
Or follow:
showering, feeding, changing shirts or
pants, working, as one used to say,
to make ourselves presentable.
Partial
strangers to our painful selves,
we’re still stranger to
diminished friends
when they appear
to hurt.
How much we fail them,
failing to come close:
a parent,
newly single, in Seattle;
an upstate poet in intensive care.
You. Blanche. Alvin. Sue.
Who hurts
and why.
Why we guess we know.
How much we never.
how to pay attention 