Past the Border

There is a feeling
for which no one ever taught me a name.

It has to do with home, with childhood.

It's a wakefulness, a wistfulness,
a chill at the top of my spine;
it is silence, and knowing, and ecstasy,
and somehow it's New England --
the outside world alive inside me.

I have put great faith in words;
they, godlike, have rewarded me.
But sometimes, when I turn to them,
they shrug,
as if to say:

"This is not of us. This is not for us.
This is of you. For you.
This is you."

intro, and "Elegy for an Old Self"

Mike Lavoie has encouraged me (at gunpoint) to start a blog. I've put his name in the title, with the (convenient) (and correct) implication that this is all his fault. The requirement is that every Sunday, I post a new piece of "creative" "work" on here, for your perusal and execration. Mike is doing the same thing on his own blog, and for all I know other people are too. After this initial introduction, I'll try to keep the self-deprecation to a minimum, but I make no promises, because I am a weak, spineless, often-malodorous twerp.

This week's offering is below. Enjoy! Feel free to post comments, if you really want people to know how bored you are.

Elegy for an Old Self

I had the bright blind will of a child;

I had the hot pure faith of a saint;

I was all; I was all, or was nothing;

Life was painful, but never faint.

But the bloom of me started to mellow,

And the green of me started to turn,

And I moved from the heat of the footlights

To behind them and watching them burn.

Now I laugh at my old affectations

With the laughter of envy and doubt;

And I know I can live with perspective,

But what am I living without?