The Young Poet Retires

It was roughly forty years ago I laid my life as a poet at the feet of a roomful of friends gathered in my large bedroom in the large house that would soon become known as the South Central Kansas Center for Peace and Social Justice. Poetry had been my artistic identity since my early teens – I was many years away from being able to call myself a musician

I can’t remember how I billed this poetry reading, I only remember the one thought that ran through my head – that it was time to stop writing poems and start living them. It was a long reading, I read about everything I had ever written. Then, I made the dramatic announcement and then just moved on, never really thought about it much after that. Only now, as I write these words and look back at my thirty year-old self, do I see the context of what came next

I did, in fact, begin living out my poems. I began to live out the poem titled “Dancing With Abandon All Night Long Every Weekend”. I lived out the poem called “One of These Women Also Dancing With Abandon Will Be My Soulmate in Thirty Years”. I lived out the poem titled “Traveling the Breadth of Mexico by Train and Bus with My Lover and My Best Friend”. I lived out the poem titled “Hang Out with People Who Make Music and Bring a Guitar and Maybe Something Will Happen”. I lived out the poem titled “There is a Beautiful Child Inside This Beautiful Woman” and also the coda, “Here is Another Beautiful Child”

I think, overall, not writing poems served me well. Eventually, music did come to stay with me, and poetry begged and pleaded until we let her come live in the spare bedroom. The beautiful children stepped out of their poems and appeared as fully functioning adults with dogs, cats and other smaller humans

My only question now is, and will always be: is this the poem that I wrote, or the one that I didn’t write?