Nearly Fifty-Seven Years of It

At thirty, you were full of angst and quite
as certain you would not survive as if you
had been closer to a final dive of ninety-five:
your assets were a jumble of instinctual

mishaps: sexual shenanigans were losing
their reliability: nothing had the snap you
wanted: everything you let the world see
was a front. You then surprised yourself by

somehow getting bunted from the plate into
the outfield – fifteen years away – when by
the age of forty-five you thought you’d
finally arrived: a sense, you felt, of warm

acceptance – wry, ironic, and more full: sex
was better, as you found the wherewithal
to live your own desires: fronts had fallen;
you no longer followed anyone’s directions

(to the letter): you had reached a level playing
field – a fine plateau would lift you, keep
you on a path whose point of vanishing
appeared quite clearly on your blue horizon.

And now you’re rising to your later fifties:
and the insults of incarnate life are rife – still
manageably small, but now there is no doubt
at all where all of this is going. What have

you been sowing, dear? What have you got
growing here? Ambition, love – whatever
you’d expected to continue with the same
excruciating ardor you had known before –

something swept it out the door. All you know,
at fifty-six, is this – set in bright suspension –
betting it against the night: there is no
getting it right. There’s only paying attention.


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