Poem: May 1, 2019

Not Forward and Not Back

I used to romanticize the past.
There's not a lot to regret or
not like, growing up white,
male, straight, and middle-class
in the suburbs, with bikes to ride
and friends with trampolines
and sledding hills and a long
string of girls to crush on.
Nostalgia comes easy- all curves
and security and personal firsts.

For my earlier years, life was
the act of looking backward,
of celebrating and replaying
the highlights, rewinding and
aching on a five-year delay
while the present grew more
complicated and contentious
in its unsupervised state.
So much easier to play in
idealized fields, to trace back
to places far away from low pay,
addiction, and drifting apart.

To fall in love with the past
is to pine away, to live inside
photographs and watch them fade.
But divorce has a way of waking
you up like a slap to the face,
like a break in the tape, and
the ends are flailing in all kinds
of directions, and there's no point
in rewinding, not a chance of
speeding forward and suddenly
the present is the only girl
in the room, and why haven't
you noticed her before
with those immediate hips,
those relevant eyes, the sexy
way she demands your hands-on
attention, and the constant
negotiations of what is, what
matters, what we want, and where
we will place our hands. Damn!

The present is not a painted lady,
not a lie you can tell yourself.
You'd better touch the present
the way you want to be touched
because to love the present is to
look around and feel your lungs
expand inside your chest. It is
biting into the apple and crunching
through the flesh. It's only now,
and not remembered, a verdant
musk, the heft of something
in your hand, your footsteps
on a solid path. Work to do and
tools and space without revision.

And imagine that path, your only
path that fades into nothing, crumbles
behind you and at your heels, and
all that is to be loved and grasped
within the periphery of your arms.
Even the branches, the divergent
roads that bat their mysterious eyes
and whisper about undiscovered
pleasures, the misty, violet,
starlit twilight paths that sing
like sirens can barely intrude or
be more than a suggestion, a hint
of something in the air. There's
no love there. Not when you
have this: Christmases and game
nights, renovations and mortgages,
dance recitals and grocery lists.