We’re sorry for ignoring you for so long
and so consistently
We’re sorry for misunderstanding
your best intentions,
whatever they were
Certainly you never
consciously sought to do harm
although sometimes
it spilled in all directions
We’re sorry you couldn’t keep up
with our map of consequences,
sorry that we made you wait
so long
you had to imagine this
the way you imagined everything—
being cherished and knowing why
being happy and knowing how
You never knew what you were doing
We’re sorry for that too
Stan Sanvel Rubin is the author of four poetry collections, most recently There. Here. (Lost Horse Press, 2013) and Hidden Sequel (Barrow Street, 2006), which won the Barrow Street Poetry Book Prize. His work has appeared in such magazines as The Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, AGNI, Poetry Northwest, and Shanghai Literary Review. He received the 2018 Vi Gale Award from Hubbub. With his late wife, Judith Kitchen, he co-founded and for a decade directed the Rainier Writing Workshop low-residency MFA Program at Pacific Lutheran University. He lives on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington and writes essay-reviews of poetry for Water-Stone Review. (updated 4/2019)