White Collar Blues

I thought the office jobs were just until

I made it as a writer.  Hoo ha.  Here

I am, 20 years later, no inch nearer

to any goal except the famous hill

I’m almost over.  What the hell.  I still

write in the evenings, and I beg to state

that at transcribing doctors I’m first rate—

medical words, a marketable skill.

And if I take a sour look at my friends

who've won the prizes I once hoped to win,

if I'm at odds with literary trends—

well, like my betters, I can wink and grin

at my defeats.  When all illusion ends,

desire of greatness was a godlike sin.

Gail White

From The Price of Everything, The Edwin Mellen
Press, © 2001.  Originally printed in The Formalist.
Reprinted by permission of the author.