Firstly, the "overloaded chest of remembrances" has instant duality -- treasure chest of memory, 'human chest' full of memory....that is GOOD. Flinging the what if's onto canvas, not just canvases, but 'fresh canvases', takes away the do-over factor and presents 'new intent.' I like that very much. "makes clear the avoidance of price" connected to a lighthouse image is filled with substance -- risk, no risk. But like scores of your poems, your crux is offered up beautifully in your last lines, like a flourish of unique signature. Those last three lines.....they present a trilogy of content, connected but separate. I think of my own parents when reading the first two lines of the last stanza: I believe I put the immobile masks on them, as I feel my children have put mine on me. And yet, as a parent, I feel I've put my own immobile mask on myself, for them (the one I show just them). Such a realm of realization contained in these last three lines of this poem. Memory's graveyard, indeed. Superb, Odin. ~~ Diana

a trenchant penchant for allusive metaphor stiffens several sentences in this poem to warrant its PG rating, wing its way towards the readers' mental mausoleums in memorial service for redolent renditions of those who mature by degrees only to graduate previously screened performances as seen previously in the school of hard knocks... that said, Odin, this poem is a real knock-out! I've placed it on permanent display in my memory's still-life at 60-frames/second collection.

Roger

Once again, you have escaped my feeble understanding. However, I have never raised a child nor had to face the teenage years. So if I'm lacking in understanding maybe because you are lamenting something I have no experience with.

Ron

Truly moving and unique work, with that usual (per you) intellectual challenge, Odin ~
Be well,
Christine

like we before them however they tend to ignore non-personal experience that is the lament as you have eluded to so well
budd