Regret
April 15 2013

I lived my life 
as if I would live forever.
So I have my regrets,
so much undone
what went unsaid.

In a rare reflective moment
the young, in their headlong rush

will pause, a second
think of death.

Of dying heroic, too young.

Of mourners, struck dumb.
The promise, immortal

of life barely begun.

But rarely of dying old.
Because the old people
they notice
come from another planet,
as if they were always thus.
And because we are immersed in time

which moves imperceptibly forward,
still as fish
in a turbulent sea
breaking against the shore.

You are middle aged
the day you look in the mirror
and overnight, you've changed,
tell-tale wrinkles
a sprinkle of grey,
even in flattering light.
When you see your elderly parents
in the back of a hand

thinly mottled,
a sagging neck

hinting of wattles.

In sombre eyes,
that look like the clothes
you slept in.

When now
you want to be old,

because the alternative
has become unnervingly real.
Knowing

how the old are rarely heroic
how soon the mourning will end
how few
remember.
And knowing, as well
how soon you'll be invisible
to the young and reckless solipsists
who will shortly be running the world.

So you write poems,
which no one reads, any more
probably never did.
Inhabiting other people
as you imagine them,
every now and then
as yourself.

Pretty sure
you will not be noticed
probably never read.
But the kind of risk
you wish you'd taken more of,
to hell with regret.

I talk about risk because I feel I'm taking one, exposing my rather morbid and pre-occupied state of mind: in which the apprehension of death has moved from theoretical to real; in which I mourn my wasted potential. My usual writing style is far more detached, far less confessional; while here, "as yourself" couldn't be anyone but me.

The world-weary sense of resignation -- almost defeat -- is not as one would like to think of oneself. It's not so much an unbecoming envy of youth as it is regret for all that I missed: that I am guilty of drift; that I don't live with enough urgency; that I play it safe. In fact, the poem does not particularly flatter youth: they are depicted as solipsistic, impatient, unempathetic, and a bit vainglorious. As opposed to the older narrator, who knows things -- "know" repeated, and coupled with "old", in a simple refrain (in the 3rd last stanza).

Anyway, drift is a mistake -- even if I am temperamentally prone to drift! I've come to realize that we are far more likely to regret the things we didn't do than those we did, despite the outcome. Because we have an unlimited capacity to rationalize outcomes; and because if we are reasonably happy with our current lives, are more than willing to accept that every fork in the road and twist and turn was necessary to get us there. While the road not taken could have gone anywhere, and we are naturally prone to idealize the destination: easy to do, when there is no reality to test it against, and the possibilities are infinite and mostly good. All this to say that a good life lesson is to err on the side of doing: that you can take that path, confident your old age will not be plagued by recrimination and regret; and that if you demur, you will leave yourself open to permanent second-guessing.

As you enter late middle age, you do become invisible. (Women more than men, I know.) And what was always "the other" is suddenly you. Just as one crosses through an opaque curtain and finds oneself in the world of the sick, one also begins to be relegated to the world of the old; to feel as if people see right through you, in the self-important self-referential headlong rush of the world.