Listen to poem:
Time Single Regret
Written: November 12, 2025, for contest sponsored by Tom Woody
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If granted the power to time-slip back—
not a scale of edits, just one clean crack
in the epoch’s obstreperous spine—
What would I convert? What moment, what line?
Would I sieve the tumult of history’s breath,
undo a war, a plague, a death?
Or would I vilify my own dwarfish past,
pluck one thread from the tapestry vast?
I considered Napoleon’s umbrella,
or whispering sense to a gin-soaked fella
who discern “Titanic” meant unsinkable fate—
But the glitch was mine, not the ship’s mistake.
I’d fly to the day I didn’t say “stay,”
when love was a lissome, vivacious ballet,
and I, a moribund, wan little rabbit,
Let fear swindle my healthier habit.
She stood in a nimbus of vernal light,
a pioneer of pleasure, a rotund delight.
I was a hayseed with embryonic grace,
a virtuoso of silence, an evocative face.
I’d evolve that. Just that. No replay.
No sesquipedalian excuses or rhapsodic decay.
Just one word spoken, one velvet touch—
not humdrum, not blithe, but just enough.
Let the empyrean writhe with ululation,
let the rubble of regret find its station.
I’d be her possessor of time,
a zoetic glitch in fate’s design.
And if the Nereids complain against me,
If the metaphor of kismet tries to unfree
My choice, I’ll redeem my soul with song—
a mellifluous farewell to what went wrong.
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