The lock is the key

“Failure is the key to success.  
Every mistake teaches us something.”

—Morihei Ueshiba






Poetry is a failed attempt 
to tell someone what it's like to be you,

but in the attempt 
we always succeed in telling them something else.

Perhaps we can tell them—
unbeknownst to ourselves
unbeknownst even to our telling—
something about themselves

or perhaps we simply 
let them tell themselves 
something about themselves

and this attempt is all that we can hope for

and this attempt is more than we could hope for

and this attempt is beyond hope.