by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)
The perfect metaphor, you think?
The missing word in my crossword puzzle,
G-R-A-C-E,
a word I couldn’t get,
a quality I don’t have.
How many other words
have I missed in my life?
L-O-V-E?
C-O-M-P-A-S-S-I-O-N?
P-U-R-P-O-S-E?
Apparently, I don’t understand the clues,
and my penciled answers
are constantly erased in self-doubt.
Understanding the overall theme of this puzzle,
lies outside my up and down comprehension.
I would like to receive the full measure of Your grace
to finish this rather incomplete puzzle
with a bold pen stroke of assurance.
The author of twelve books for young adults, Mel Glenn has lived nearly all his life in Brooklyn, NY, where he taught English at A. Lincoln High School for thirty-one years. Lately, he’s been writing poetry, and you can find his most recent poems in a new YA anthology, This Family Is Driving Me Crazy, edited by M. Jerry Weiss.
If you’d like to learn more about his work, visit: http://www.melglenn.com/
The Jewish Writing Project 
This poem is so searing, and makes me feel compassionate to the poet in pain. Perhaps such doubting of one’s own sense of purpose or wealth of love is itself a kind of grace. Please post more of Mel’s work — it seems that only a person with true grace could write such beautiful poetry.
A “loss” implies the obvious, that the narrator had it at some point but no longer does. Yet the very grappling with the issue itself reveals that the grace is not lost but quite firmly in place.
Kudos to you and your brutal self-honesty, Mel.