Don Colburn recently took a buyout from The Oregonian after a 33-year career as a newspaper reporter. He has published two award-winning poetry collections: Another Way to Begin and As If Gravity Were a Theory. His new chapbook, Because You Might Not Remember, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. 

Read more from Don Colburn:

Coach

Notes On A Cross-Training Writer

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Maybe, Just Maybe

by Don Colburn

is hard to say without conjuring up

maybe not. Useful if you want

wiggle room. But maybe not

if you're trying to hold fast, declare,

draw a line in the shifting sand.

Today, from a whistlestop train,

a man who must worry about saying the wrong thing

or the right thing heard crooked

by those in a hurry to get someplace else,

said maybe, just maybe.

His maybe balanced a nearly unbearable

burden, like the ant lugging a bread crumb

over molehills all the way home.

The tall man at the end of the train

said if we recognize ourselves

in one another, then maybe, just maybe -

and that underling word lifted free

of maybe not. Even on the radio

you could see his index finger

pointing to you and to me.

January 19, 2009