It rolls off my fingers.
I do not get a chance to get a grip
upon it.

When it falls,
it falls soft,
does not break,
rolls just out of reach.

I cannot bend to retrieve it,
have no strength to pick it up.

I can see it
right there, just out of reach.
Intact, clearly mine,
ready.

But it rolled off my fingers
like drops of water,
like a ball dropped
into clumsy hands
that I never learned to use.

I have no faith
that I’ll ever do this right.

I try and try again
with these broke,
broken hands
that will not grip
or hold on. 

Tired
as Job, tired as
Sisyphus, scabbed up
and pus-bloody —
it’s laughable, really,
from any other viewpoint
but this one:

watch the clown
stumble through the fumbled catch
and fall down like
a cautionary figure
from the oldest tales.
Watch me thrill
to my own failure

then watch me get up
and bow
and do it again.