Regret

Regret

by Lawrence Raab

Every day there's something old

to feel sorry about—

what I should have done and didn't,

or what I did, and kept on doing.

I want to believe 

everyone's forgotten by now.

Then I picture them thinking back.

And those who've died

and earned the wisdom death allows

just shake their heads and sigh.

"Very funny," my father would say

after my sister and I played 

some cruel little joke on him.

"Ha, ha," he'd add,

to let us know he got the point.

We want to forget

until we start to forget.

We want the past to change,

and we want it back.

"Enough is enough,"

my father used to say

to tell us it was over.

"Regret" by Lawrence Raab, from The History of Forgetting. © Penguin Poets, 2009.