Day by day, year by year
In celebration of my rapidly approaching 75th B-day; NO, Google, I DON’T need to “Fix” my listing by noting for all that I was born closer to the end of the American Civil War than to the “coming of middle age” of Tom Brady and Gissele’s kids.
If bad things
happen to you when
you’re young (and they surely will)
and hurt you at that time
and these bad things
retain their power
over the years
so that when you’re much older
they still hurt you,
consider yourself
very lucky
or stupid (sorry, but come on . . .)
It appears to me
that far more often
the bad shit
coming our way,
as we get older
the unforeseen and unknowable future
holds far greater opportunities
for pain than we can imagine
when we’re young,
until it hits us.
I know this sounds a bit
like an old guy
telling younger people
in a heartless
reaction to their pain
and/or heartbreak,
“Oh that’s nothin’
jus’ you wait.”
And it sounds like that
because that’s pretty much what it is.
But only the unfolding of the years
can show what I’m talking about.
Which, come to think of it,
makes the writing and reading
of this poem
pretty much
a waste of time.
Sorry:
first for this poem
but even more
for what you’ve got coming
your way
as you wait in joyful idiocy
for the coming of
nothing
and no one
in particular.
Because what’s moving towards you,
invisible and silent for now
may make what has come before
puny and forgettable in comparison.
