What Could I Have Been?

I

There is no formula for life.
Yet we believe there is….such as:
certain alignments of the stars,
genetic twists and turns
that have formulaic portents
for the absolute guidance for
one moment of muscle, bone and brain
to move inexorably toward another
that end up lifting our arms or
brining us to ecstatic moments
of invention, joy, or sadness

But there is no such formula of life.

When I remember my youth
I am saddened by the fact that I cannot reach him,
and say to him: “You are a bright star,
and you have starlight for a path,”
and when I see him moving in his small world,
constrained by this and that,
[both love and the lack of it]
I want to hold his small hand
and give him love from this great distance.


But he is there, such a frail and unawares creature,
and I am here, old and stuffed with regrets,
and the tragedy of our separation
brings tears to my eyes.


But there was no path, no highway
full of decisions given to him by some higher plan,
just his wanderings…….his singular and lonely wanderings,
not unlike those of all of us in those young and fragile days.

If we are cast in a mold of inevitability
what does it matter since we cannot touch
and feel its contours that spell out
the next step and the next one
on to our tomorrows?


Had I known one good philosophical argument of life,
had I grasped one great poem of historic value,
had I had prescient dreams that gave me grand tomorrows
had I been perfectly connected to all the pieces of my person,
what could I have been that I am not?


II

It is said that our awareness of suffering
causes our suffering.
The vast litany of our suffering throughout life
must give us full knowledge of that state,
and yet it seems not to matter;
who chooses suicide at the moment
of this realization?


I try to capture that young boy
who knew nothing of what I know,
who moved fluidly along the streets
in those summer days,
innocent in all things I have found,
and have no reason to wish upon him
any knowledge of his tomorrows,
his joys and sufferings, his loves and disappointments.


He was, he is, the juncture of star dust and
the amalgam of light and darkness.
He had no future.
He is no end of that future.