NEVER SEVENTEEN AGAIN

I will never be seventeen again;
In fact, I never was the first time.
Nothing I missed at that age,
Or in years after,
Can ever be recovered.

I will never be seventeen again,
Nor twenty-seven,
Nor even thirty-seven,
Though less distanced from that.

It doesn’t matter why this happened,
How much of my reaction was unconscious
And why.
Those are still the “lost years”;
All I have left for them
Is to mourn and cry.

Digging up those sorrows
To the taste of consciousness
To taste that pain and learn its lessons,
To digest more
Of my inner emotions and psyche
Is sometimes bitter,
But more so, mouth-stuffingly numb,
Like the tasteless taste of day-old bread
To the burdened depressive.

But swallow I must,
And likely more than once.
I may have to swallow a thousand times
Before I own it.

I am not seventeen,
Or even twenty-seven.
And, if I am to find fulfillment,
Or love today,
Or other contentments and desires,
From the inner joys
Nestled with the inner pains,
It must be as someone who is forty-three,
Or doing his reasonable best to accept that.