Regret
People my verses do not teem with hurt
more than the fleshed-out memories
that get to them. Lying inert
in the mortuary of unfinished thought
they fester and rankle. I hanker
to breathe into them new life. I cannot.
Past words, flesh-touches clutch
and recede, leaving the mind
blanker than mind can contemplate.
I would be Aeneas
but the shades that haunt me
don’t turn to Marpesian rock. They wander
formless and forming in the mind’s glades.
They do not beckon. But I come.
I have tried Lethe and the upper air;
each time regret pushes me down again.
Page(s) 39
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