Good Advice By Ruth Stone

Here is not exactly here

because it passed by there

two seconds ago;

where it will not come back.

Although you adjust to this--

it’s nothing, you say,

just the way it is.

How poor we are,

with all this running

through our fingers.

“Here,” says the Devil,

“Eat. It’s Paradise.”

*

From “Ordinary Words” by Ruth Stone (Paris Press: 80 pp., $19.95)