On a Napkin

Not meant for tears or ink,
but sopping up some drink
I spilled on sitting down.
Your furrows match my frown.
I’ll melt like you perhaps.

At least life’s small mishaps 
may meet things to absorb them,
myself tonight among them.
And in a pinch I guess
you’d do all right for the mess

some make of themselves when they cry
at sixes and sevens outside where they try
to write about why they do it. This bit,
in embarrassed blue, a case in point.

First published, in an earlier version, in The New Criterion
This poem is for Edward Swift