So much was wasted in
The silence of youth:
Sullen wordlessness, anxious clamming,
Wide eyed terror.

So much was never learned
That spaces for joy remained empty,
Open wounds in the landscape
Of the foothills of adulthood,
The scars of short sightedness.

We have a history of scattering:
Life blows our dandelion clock
So the breeze can float us
To all corners of the field;
We take root where we land.

For me, this was always
A source of pride, of infantile superiority,
Over those with smaller worlds,
With family trees like Scots pines,
Ever higher above the same patch of earth.

In the end, I only grew up too,
Building for myself a small
Personal world of day trips
And words and imagination.

So many moments passed, unnoticed
By my downcast eyes but
Imagined, too late, by a mind
That sees rose as the tint of regret.

So many years passed that
The drift, so imperceptible to
My younger eyes, is now
All too obvious. The ties that should bind
Hang loose, too short to reach,
Too inflexible to stretch.

Too much is wasted in
The silence of now that is
Too loud to drown out,
Too wide to cross,
Too hard to break.

01/04/2017

Posted on 01/05/2017
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