And then there are the minor ways –
the obvious, the understood.
One maximizes holidays.
One looks up to the skies and prays
for good.
One leaves work early for a change
and sets his mind to other things.
One heads off to the putting range.
One contemplates how much is strange
that fortune brings.
You might call these “the things we do” –
the strategies that get us by,
the strategies that see us through,
that help us breathe and crawl and chew
and laugh and love and cry.
You’ll say that these are not oblique
because they’re things we do each day.
They do not move us to a peak
or offer secrets through some leak
within Creation’s passageway.
But here’s a fact for scribes and bards:
Obliquity is everywhere.
It’s all in how you read the cards.
Our strategies are in the shards
of turtle shells that fall from human care.