Academy of American Poets
View Cart | Log In 
Subscribe | More Info 
Find a Poet or Poem
Advanced Search >
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ada Limón
Ada Limón
Born in 1976, Ada Limón received the 2005 Autumn House Poetry Prize for her debut collection, Lucky Wreck...
More >
Want more poems?
Subscribe to our
Poem-A-Day emails.
FURTHER READING
Poems about Luck
Hey Allen Ginsberg Where Have You Gone and What Would You Think of My Drugs?
by Rachel Zucker
Luck is not chance (1350)
by Emily Dickinson
Lucky
by Tony Hoagland
Near misses
by Laura Kasischke
Page 22 / oh lucky me
by Frances Chung
Sponsor a Poet Page | Add to Notebook | Email to Friend | Print

The Conditional

 
by Ada Limón

Say tomorrow doesn't come.
Say the moon becomes an icy pit.
Say the sweet-gum tree is petrified.
Say the sun's a foul black tire fire.
Say the owl's eyes are pinpricks.
Say the raccoon's a hot tar stain.
Say the shirt's plastic ditch-litter.
Say the kitchen's a cow's corpse.
Say we never get to see it: bright
future, stuck like a bum star, never
coming close, never dazzling.
Say we never meet her. Never him.
Say we spend our last moments staring
at each other, hands knotted together,
clutching the dog, watching the sky burn.
Say, It doesn't matter. Say, That would be
enough. Say you'd still want this: us alive,
right here, feeling lucky.



About this poem:
"There is so much to worry about. All the time, so much worry. Here, I wanted to take all the worry as far out as I could and then stamp it out under the heavy black boot of love."

Ada Limón






Copyright © 2013 by Ada Limón . Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on March 14, 2013. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.
Larger TypeLarger Type | Home | Help | Contact Us | Privacy Policy Copyright © 1997 - 2013 by Academy of American Poets.