While waiting for my life to start
While tiring of my dying
I cannot give away my heart
Though not for want of trying
On my part
Nobody wants the thing
Lucky for me nobody will take it
Anyway
Somebody might just drop it and break it
So they say
Nobody wants to die too fast
Nobody wants to live too slow
What have I done to deserve all this
(An answer which nobody would know)?
Not enough future or too much past?
Not much hope yet love to spare and share
Even so
Am I the only one lonely here?
I am done dying! Let living start!
Day turns night as winter rounds the year
I reach out and nobody is there
More faithful than anybody is
At fifty-four I thought I had things sorted
Or at least one might think I ought to
But I never got or forgot to
And once-clear reflections wink back distorted
Where clearly nobody blows me a kiss
And now I seem to me to be
Falling in love with nobody
Just like me
II
Somebody
I find myself beginning to connect
With others of my kind at this late hour
Those of us left here struggling to perfect
A way to say something about now or
Then and how or when and why or else what
We wonder about and wander to see
And seeing then to seek by words of power
To find what is lost and speak what is sought
When we touch one another through the page
This is the consolation of my age
As good a reason as any to be
Here in the first place remaining as I
Have found to keep living and maybe why
As good a reason as any to me
People once thought I was homeless because
I looked like it and I probably was
In mind and in heart before this best part
Of life came in the nick of time and space
But I have something to do and the place
To do it in before I go away
It feels good to be here and good to know
With no away to go to I must stay
Like an old tree to know nothing but to grow
As good a reason as any to be
When we touch one another through the page
As good a reason as any to me
This is the consolation of my age
III
Everybody
In the end everything resolves perfectly
Since everybody is dead
During the process life lived imperfectly
Is catalytic instead
The oyster grows the pearl
The trouble grows the girl
Or boy as he or she is meant to be
As you become you and I become me
When things resolve perfectly then we are gone
But it never matters then
Things will resolve perfectly when we move on
If only the perfection of nothingness
We have lived and died so long for so much less
IV
All
Life rises and falls again and again:
Again and again and again!
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