Self-Portrait as Runner Up

I've never been a shoe-in. I'm always flappable,
and when I make a joke it's like fumbling
for change. My motto is Yes, But.
I'm everybody's third choice, and rightly so,
because I couldn't blaze a trail
in butter. Most of my twenties
I spent paging through catalogs,
my thirties struggling with a stuck zipper.

Now, in my cruise-control forties,
I seem to watch the weather channel
in my sleep. I've never gone
without saying. Believe me, I need
plenty of introduction. When the comet
everyone's mad about appears
in the northern sky, I see lint,
a dim and vaguely luminous idea,
celestial smudge on my glasses.

Still, more and more mornings I wake
and let the cracks and cobwebs
on the ceiling swim for a moment
in my blurred, dread-stirred eyes.
Then rise with a relish past fame
to tend a fire as common as it seems rare.

— David Graham