thursday's poem
this poem is for the poets at the santa cruz word church, a lovely place for poets, which challenged and changed me for years.
when i was fifteen
i was in no danger
was never going to yearn
was never going to be lost
except in the sweet way
a puppy can be bewildered
when you pretend to throw the tennis ball
when i was nineteen
i got myself into some trouble
some difficulty brought about
because i didn't understand how
to create beauty from the things
that i wanted to say
with the words inside me
that i kept hidden
i am fifty-five years old
i have earned at least some of this grey
stumbling and searching for
a way to be free
not the freedom of
free falling meteorites
which feel no shame
but are definitely
to blame
just the normal freedom
of a living creature
free to breathe, to burn
to rise, to walk,
as if this was the world
i was meant to live in
what this grey
and all my years
have taught me
is not much
not the wise answer
making meaning from all my mistakes
not the righteous anger
fueled by some triumph over injustice
just this small thing
my fingers held this far apart
this precise interval
the universal constant
the distance between me and
the most shocking acts of selfishness you could imagine
and also the distance between me
and something beautiful enough for tears
pinned between these two mirrored walls
i see nothing but myself
and seek nothing but the poems
that make enough light
to turn the walls transparent
revealing the worlds hidden behind them