Poem: Not My Life?

Saturday, 2 April 2011

Not my life?

The last thirty years of my life
have not been mine.
No, I wouldn't deny or even reject
my children; my son, my daughters,
nor my wives, my ex, my present,
nor a walk we took, a hike really
high in the Pyrenees above the
clouds, where we bathed in
streams and lakes, of almost
just melted water, no that chill
is undeniable, it had to be mine,
this rush like a seizure, can't say
not having had, rather like an
allergic sneeze that has me, one me
saying it's not me, cannot in
any case, cannot deny, it is me
the prickly moments, the lived
through deception, the bitterness carried
forward through the decades
and things olfactory, the undenial of
a color, lately it's Othoniel's brilliant
Murano glass balls, it all so feels like me
living that, what is it then that
I reject, that I deny as some
infinite regret? A memory of
someone whose life wasn't mine?
But I've been here through it all,
while he took an extended vacation.