New Poem: When I Was Young

When I Was Young

I. Separation

My head was filled with weeds,
spirits danced in my veins,

I ate cactus buttons and watched
the world dissolve in color.

But I never found the secret,
never found my name on the map.

So many years spent seeking
wisdom in the words of saints,

philosophers, poets, anyone
who might reveal the why of birth.

And all that time I was watching
as I wandered in harsh deserts

searching for the hidden stone
that might reveal an ultimate cause,

never quite realizing the answer
was so close I couldn't touch it.

II. Initiation

Brilliant reds of autumn seemed so bright
and rain was a reason to go outside.

With each year lost, the days grew shorter,
more fog-ridden, somnolent, and murky.

I abandoned chasing coyotes and crows
in favor of young women equally elusive.

It seemed, then, important to grow up,
to leave the mountains and forests of youth

for the city, the possibilities of age,
the grim surrender, the lost trail.

But what else was lost, and what gained?
How many hours spent sitting at the bar

smoking, drowning, pretending to know
what years of questing never revealed?

One day, any day, no different
from the last -- the search abandoned.

III. Return

I was young once, though it seems
like another life. I had a father

(for a while) and a mother (sort of) and
a sister (adopted), all now gone.

I sit here, nearly forty, trying to make
some meaning of all those passing suns.

Over and over, returning to the one thing,
the one anchor in all the rough seas

of this life -- the love of a woman.
And now, this woman, who sets me

adrift in the unknown, who unties
the knots binding my soul, who is mystery

and revelation. In the quiet surrender
I remember the child who sought answers.

In the fertile embrace, a deep forgetting.
I remember why I set foot on the path.

Tags: poetry, poem, new poem, When I Was Young, youth, relationships, love, searching, meaning