bare.

“Life is a struggle between obligations and possibilities.
For obligations are palpable, soundly rooted in reciprocal deeds.
Possibilities on the other hand are chimeras, flimsy and reckless, even dangerous.
And as we grow older and wiser we realize this and close them off. This is reality.”
-Nicholas Evans, The Horse Whisperer

young men are intoxicated with the future
i find this to be one of the great truths of life.
promise, idealism…
hope…
they offer such verve, such whimsy
a rush, a high.
young men worry not about the future,
for the future is there…
on the horizon…
always…
they can’t even see the horizon for the iceberg
all the while
trying to patch the holes rather than
man the lifeboats.
but
…somewhere…
…somehow…
along the path that life
and time
takes them on…
everything shifts,
for better or worse.
I know this, because as much as I fancy my
youthfulness
as much as I want to deny that my life has reached that
tipping point where
I am now counting down rather than up…
I am, in fact, becoming an old man.
The days of being
adrift in euphoria
are fewer and further between.
I may still be frisky as the October wind,
but I know things…
really know them…
unlike 20 years ago when I just thought I did.
Possibilities have long been replaced,
one by one,
by obligations…
and my younger days now look like
nothing more
than cake eating
in the middle of a revolution.
paralyzed with melancholy,
I am still an incorrigible dreamer…
I was tailor made to fit this part.
If she were to flee to the ends of the earth,
if she turns her back on me
for eternity…
I will still defend her memory
because now as the scale tips…
memories replace dreams as my currency.
I’m Scrooge,
plagued by ghosts…
because old men,
let me tell you for real
are intoxicated with the past.