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my eyes turn back
I …
have courted luck in countless ways
against ragged judgments and self-umbrage
I still draw breaths, counted
and the mirror has been charitable
most I meet deem me forty
(I’m not about to correct them)
my visage betrays scant little of the
darkness and damage within
oh, it will one day chase me down -
no doubt soon enough
but I feign my teens in bearing also
that, a lack of maturity
hence I make no false assumptions of
grandeur or wisdom
my child's heart thrives and bounds
(a lad seeking truths yet proven)
it yearns, still, for a soft meadow's callow passions
and the blossomed beams of a
summer moon, daubing sweet skin …
I hold no kinship to middle-age or frosted brows
'tis a young man's mad marrow that
moves my flesh
the ambitious vigor of a
yearning heart that thrums my chest
there is nothing of my age but the years themselves
and the altered perspective of being
nearer dusk than dawn …
my eyes look abaft now more than onward,
I must concede that -
all the myriad priorities of gain and
dream and want have dissolved into the one
meaningful prerogative of life itself -
the only TRUE worthwhile endeavor that
should be the foundation
the solid base that we learn and treasure and
build upon from childhood,
the ONLY thing that I've come, thru all these years
through all these countless lessons and
struggles, to care about ...
that is, quite simply and purely and
unmistakably …
love.
Copyright ©
Gregory Richard Barden
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