Soft Spots
They’ re worse than weak links
in chains, which we can blame
on blacksmiths’ fire, and chinks
in armor, made by rain
of arrows. Soft spots,
those parts of us that bruise,
prove we’ re fruit that rots
as hourglasses ooze.
But I’ ve a soft spot for,
a phrase we tend to whisper,
is what we say before
we name our guilty pleasure —
the damper pedal that pounds
sonatas into mush
the critic Ezra Pound
would call, with a shudder, slush.