When I Was Older

When I was older and loved myself,

I shuffled a path, looked at my feet.

No untied laces, and no storefronts mounted

An offensive. Senses unusually clear.

I’d claim I was wise to an intuitive rule—

Each happenstance has only so much power

To delude as we give it our touch,

Or perhaps greater still, as we are touched.

But our wisdom itself defines tragedy—

We know how to defy ruin, circumvent pain,

But our nature makes this solution

Too bitter to swallow, lest we cede humanity.

At last there was a day I woke, crushed

By the requirement for intercourse

With so vast a menagerie of guests

That I searched for a chasm to dive,

A life with such velocity that might, perhaps,

Bring my old monocular path back

To eyes that had forgotten how to close.

And falling, I am occasionally apt to smile,

To window shop without insisting touch.

Still I struggle to judge whether to smell,

Taste or hear those things that yet intrude.

And in its turn a question that predates

Even birth and, I imagine, to which death

Is utterly indifferent, teases me—

A matter of fractional ounces, scant drops,

A muttering of fate, a distant whisper:

Did I jump too soon, or laughably too late?

EJR