Nick Talent’s most recent poem to appear here was Ten-Year Anniversary (October 2013).

One Bad Bulb
By Nick Talent

One bad bulb
is all it takes to turn
the whole tree dark.

There is no easy fix,
no way around
the hard work.

So you start
at the beginning,
go one bulb at a time

until you find
the one in the strand
that needs help.

And you fix it.
So once again
there is light.