From Maturity: A Work in Progress

Where are the poems I had thought to writein this the shaded grove of my retirement?Call it what you will, that longed-for respitehas brought humility if not atonementfor blunders, oversights, and covert liesthat seemed but ways of coping at the time.But where, if anywhere, are my entreatiesto whatsoever power might redeemmy early follies? Where my elegiesfor youth or middle age or reckless passion?Today my thoughts and unleashed energiesare weighing images, as is their fashion,in search of who-knows-what enabling theme.If lines should be the fruit of that adventure,then let those lines depict without erasuresuch scenes as language can or cannot redeem.

2

What are the wages of a faulty marriage?That afternoon it might have been an arrow,her caustic taunt. It was more than I could manage.To keep the faith, to walk the Straight and Narrow,is fine enough, but let’s not kid ourselves:to err is human, even when the stakesare higher than the highest warehouse shelfand no less treacherous. We make mistakesand break each other’s spirits while we’re at it.So who was in the right or in the wrong?Who was being good and who erratic?What matters now, those dust-ups long since gone,is not the portioning of blame or praisebut whether it is possible at lastto set aside those lenses, which have castfor forty years their colors on our days.

4

How can we tell a symptom from a cause,especially in matters of the heart?Late in the afternoon, I think it was,when she stood still, preparing to depart.Beside her stood my son, his hand in hers.Was it a symptom, that internal pain,which would recur, the months becoming years,as if to say again and yet againthat bonds of flesh and blood could not sufficeto staunch whatever hemorrhage had commenced,unchecked, untreated? Call it the slow releaseof each lost Parents’ Day, each missed performance,the casual and everyday communionof son and father. May these verses be,for all their poverty and imperfection,those hours’ late, unsteady elegy.

6

Let it begin, this heartfelt act of courage,this fortunate departure. Here on the eveof a son’s auspicious entry into marriage,let ancient grievances unclench themselvesand petty spites be buried with their handles.What unresolved dispute or unhealed cutin any one of us can hold a candleto this impersonal transforming ritethat gives the lie to self-inflicted rancor?In truth those bitter scenes to which my mindso readily returns are neither herenor anywhere, their drama long since ended.Before us lies this luminous commencement,which summons us to listen and allowremembered injuries to be but strawin these the fires of the present moment.