Another Year

 

Still here, still loping along

at my current pace,

to quote Shel Silverstein,

“I don’t know where I’m going,

but I’ve seen where I’ve been”.

a la, Backwards Bill.

 

A poem I’ve known since childhood,

which today (of all days) seems

like a very long time ago.

Yet, really, really recent.

A flood of childhood memories

are always lingering on the fringes

of my mind.

 

Yet the memories are sort of

sepia toned and rusty at the edges,

sort of an out of focus Polaroid yet revealing

so much detail in an over-bright flash.

The flash on the embarrassments,

the mistakes, the shames, the

assumptions corrected.

 

It is true that I value those

moments for the learning experiences

that they were meant to be, I just have

never quite understood why I have had

to learn those lessons the hard way;

From longing and lusty loving, to the

rejections of affections and every

hard luck emotion in between.   

 

I’ll cut in to some birthday cake

sometime soon and I’ll think about

all the cake I didn’t eat in a time when

I didn’t much like cake, but now, as I’m

older, I like cake very much.

I’ll think of the wasted selfish wishes

blown over ever growing numbers of

candles. Maybe, the good wishes too,

I suppose.

 

I’m still here, slightly happy,

less unhappy, loved and love to give.