Holding Up

March 13 2019

All one can hope

is that in the fullness of time
it will be said
his work holds up well.

So, is this too much to ask?

Unlike this driveway, cleared to the bone

that will soon fill up once more;

asphalt, glistening black

against the virgin snow.

Unlike this garden, dormant since fall

that will need the work of spring,

the weeding, re-seeding

repletion of soil.

Its forgotten carrots

left to rot

returning to the earth,

last year's kale, caught by frost

and left for fattening deer.

Unlike the routine chores

that are either doing or done

or waiting to be,

then need doing once more.

How the kitchen sink needs emptying

the rumpled beds made whole,

garbage bins go out-and-in

my well-trimmed beard re-grows.

So much of our days

spent holding our own;

running in place

as the world circles beneath us

and circles again,

regular as clockwork.

But will the words I wrote decades ago

hold up over time?

Or will I cringe

     . . . wish I could re-write

              . . . disown my younger self?

The consolation is

a poem is never really finished.

Is not even mine,

once I send it out into the world

and relinquish control.

If I learn this poem by heart

will it, too, grow old;

like me

its memory faltering

and a little lost?

As if memorization

could insure posterity.

As if the world

were not oblivious

to the ramblings of an old man.

To the words he long ago wrote

that even he forgot.