Hard Times for the Elfin Tailor

College students have a way of getting down on themselves about struggles with their subject. If I'm not able to do this, they say, how am I supposed to do something in this field as a job? Or perhaps it's more along the lines of How does what I'm doing here matter at all? Accordingly, sometimes it's nice to remember where we are and what we are working with—or, as Kay Ryan encourages us to do, balance the daily challenges facing the elfin tailor with the rarity of being an elfin tailor, of being trusted to work with enchanted cloth at all.

Bad Day

Kay Ryan

Not every day

is a good day

for the elfin tailor.

Some days

the stolen cloth

reveals what it

was made for:

a handsome weskit

or the jerkin

of an elfin sailor.

Other days

the tailor

sees a jacket

in his mind

and sets about

to find the fabric.

But some days

neither the idea

nor the material

presents itself;

and these are

the hard days

for the tailor elf.