This error is the sign of love,
the crack in the ice where the otters breathe,
the tear that saves a man from power….
…. this error is the sign of love.
The leak in the nest, the hole in the coffin,
the crack in the picture plate a young girl fills with her secret life…
… The teacher’s failings in which the students ripen…
… boredom, shyness, bodily discomforts like long rows of white
stones at the edge of the highway…
… The fault in the sea floor where the fish linger and mate,
the birthmark that sets the girl apart and years later she alone of
the sisters finds her calling…
… the earth’s wobbling axis uncoiling seasons--seed that need six
months of drought, flowers shaped for the tongues of moths…
… the picnic basket that slips overboard and leads to the invention
of the lobster trap,
the one slack line in a poem where the listener relaxes and
suddenly the poem is in your heart like a fruit wasp in an
apple,
this error is the sign of love!



from a poem by Lewis Hyde