May December

Can you grow old

with someone thirty years younger

Will you listen to music

without experiences attached

Can you look at her mother

and not see your old prom date

Will you laugh at her jokes

with the punch line unknown

Can you watch her enliven

as you worry in secret

Will you accept both her children

without rejecting your own

Can you tell her the truth

wrapped in lies of forgetting

Will you walk into the sunset

—still holding her hand

 

(The New Room: January, 2022)

 

Riptide

It’s always been different

and always the same

it’s all been anonymous

and all had a name

It’s had no beginning

and having no end

the truth lost in playing

this game of pretend

The magic in giving,

what’s been taken is lost

the price of the folly

exceeding its cost

And we search the horizon

never leaving the shore

the waves ever constant

now as then—and before

 

(The New Room: January, 2022)

Matthew 18:3

Tonight, I became my youngest son,

my oldest son now gone

My youth reframed, new joy proclaimed,

a lost returning song

 

Tonight, I became that little boy,

whose playpen sets me free

All toys reclaimed, no further blame

—to enter joyfully

 

(The New Room: January, 2022)