Summing Up

This was the life I intended,

the events and the spaces between.

This was the excitement of serendipity

and discoveries, both welcome and not.

This was the idiocy of youth and the redeeming

subtle wisdom sometimes beneath its failures.

This was not the incense-perfumed credo,

the frog march to an altar or a license office,

or any kind of neat, expected career path.

It was definitely not time spent primarily watching.

In no way did it accept the suggested way.

Despite the the fields of squandered opportunities

and its beshit monuments to prideful choice

it was never a temptation to turn from 

the ornery path I determined to break.

It was a night on a hilltop under a blanket of stars.

It was following the butterfly's pulsing wings to the bush.

On a dangerous flight, it was peeking through the black out flap

at the ocean of snow-capped peaks tumbling to the horizon.

In Cairo's City of the Dead, it was a straight return kick

of an offside soccer ball to a pack of cheering local boys.

For a time, it was walking beside the Potomac with an autistic son,

as if the nightly ritual and the exercise might make some difference.

Once, it was saying no to the importunate DepSecDef because

what he wanted couldn't be done in time despite his promises.

I was always the fool with opinions and books

and often blind to the ordinary and the obvious.

But I was not the politician, the pastor, the public figure

excusing the inexcusable to please a hot-tempered public.

Never, never a follower

I never followed the bad.