Things Shouldn't Be So Hard
By Kay Ryan
U.S. Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, 2007-2010
A life should leave
deep tracks:
ruts where she
went out and back
to get the mail
or move the hose
around the yard;
where she used to
stand before the sink,
a worn-out place;
beneath her hand
the china knobs
rubbed down to
white pastilles;
the switch she
used to feel for
in the dark
almost erased.
Her things should
keep her marks.
The passage
of a life should show;
it should abrade.
And when life stops,
a certain space--
however small--
should be left scarred
by the grand and
damaging parade.
Things shouldn't
be so hard.
