NaPM April 10 2016

[milo]

(I had a better title but I forgot it, so)

NOT

I roam the space
where you are not
I breathe the air
you have not got
I fill the skin
you are not in
and where you end
I can begin.

If there's an answer
you don't know it
and if it's secret
I'll not show it
I'm a quite contrary sort
I could be tall
except I'm short --
Is this a poem?
Mission abort!

---

No no no, I couldn't bear for that to be it, so, this is. If it's not cool to have two poems up (very loosely speaking) I'll happily delete the preceeding.

This one, well, needs work, and the last two lines are a bit flaccid, but I think it's a better read, at least, than the previous doggerel.  

What Didn't Happen

I read in a novel about a pact
two people made to meet years hence
at a certain grave, but never kept
because one of them was dead.
And suddenly I recall
I made such a pact when I was young
with one, no, two friends and now
I cannot remember who they were,
where we were to meet, or when.

I'm not dead yet but they may be
whoever they were. I think we meant
to meet in New York or maybe San Francisco,
on a significant date, say, the century's end,
and we swore, we promised each other that,
no matter what, we'd turn up then
and greet and compare our lives.

That insistent road not taken jingles
in mind again; I have no idea
who I was, even, or who I'd have been
if things had turned out so I knew
those friends well or long enough to fulfill
our promise. I feel sure this was not
my idea as I always knew myself for one
whose road would take many turns.

It seemed fine at the time, to say I'd join in.
But, who were they? And did they meet,
and miss me and wonder if my life had been
as good or bad or mixed as theirs?
Or did they not even think of me except
to ask, was there not a third of us?
No, I don't think there could have been,
and then gone on to have drinks or tea.

I'm better off, I think, not to have lived
that life, but to be living this one.

I is more than cool to have 2 and it celebrates a long tradition