Midlife Crisis request/Disappointment

[angabel.livejournal.com]

Going through a midlife crisis. Send help. Poems help. Thank you.

Disappointment

I was feeling pretty religious
standing on the bridge in my winter coat
looking down at the gray water:
the sharp little waves dusted with snow,
fish in their tin armor.

That's what I like about disappointment:
the way it slows you down,
when the querulous insistent chatter of desire
goes dead calm

and the minor roadside flowers
pronounce their quiet colors,
and the red dirt of the hillside glows.

She played the flute, he played the fiddle
and the moon came up over the barn.
Then he didn't get the job, —
or her father died before she told him
that one, most important thing—

and everything got still.

It was February or October
It was July
I remember it so clear
You don't have to pursue anything ever again
It's over
You're free
You're unemployed

You just have to stand there
looking out on the water
in your trench coat of solitude
with your scarf of resignation
lifting in the wind.

-- Tony Hoagland

Comments

[duathir.livejournal.com]

Those Who Love Will Never Find It

Those who love will never find it.
Those who love will write odes to crisp fall mornings
And hear symphonies crunched out of the yellow leaves beneath their feet.
Those who love will smile, even though they know
it will give them away
They will offer themselves up as if they had never given the mirror a second glance,
Let themselves be beaten like drums,
And a drum is just a bucket of silence
until you beat something out of it,
Beat something out of it.

Those who love will find poetry in the steam of their coffee
And beauty in even the worst of times;
Leave names like kristallnacht in our history books because they know that broken glass looks like stars,
And when a person truly loves there is nothing, nothing that can stop them from hoping.
People are like buckets of silence
Until you make something out of them,
Make something beautiful.

People who love know that tears
are the same as rain, and they are ready for monsoons
Because loving is lonely,
and for every drop out of shining eye
there are hundreds more waiting in the sky
and the people who love will dance in the downpour,
Collect every drop they can hold where the silence once was because drums can hold tears too,
and they will still be silent until you splash
and make something out of it,
make something beautiful.

By Thomas McEnaney