Soft Spots

They’re worse than weak links

in chains, which we can blame

on blacksmiths’ fire, and chinks

in armor, made by rain

of arrows. Soft spots,

those parts of us that bruise,

prove we’re fruit that rots

as hourglasses ooze.

But I’ve a soft spot for,

a phrase we tend to whisper,

is what we say before

we name our guilty pleasure—

the damper pedal that pounds

sonatas into mush

the critic Ezra Pound

would call, with a shudder, slush.