Ritual

Contributor: Douglas K Currier

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He makes a ritual of inactivity,
sits in the same chair here,
the same there, moves from one
to the other cardinal points of his life.

It’s a ritual life disturbs. Life –
as in people, places, activities that cause
absences, cause him to leave
the vicinity of the chairs he knows
will be empty when he arrives.

Each going out, he measures
in the doubt he will have to endure.
Each face to face is a way for him
to fail, once again, in ways at which
he can only guess.

Happiness, he must estimate, having
no gauge small enough to measure it exactly.


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I am a former college professor who has been published in Laurel Review, Dominion Review, The Café Review, and Fish Stories. My work appears in the anthology, Onion River: Six Vermont Poets. I live in Burlington, VT.