WOE 2 Michael James

Joy, which used to run like an open faucet

full and strong before me, 

now dribbles, if it comes at all, as if a prolonged drought had 

dried up all its springs and turned its streams to dust. 

And even when I hear the small, insistent voice saying,

"Oh, but you know the line is thinly drawn twixt joy and sorrow, 

making them but two sides of the same coin, 

and equally valuable,” a coin of whose realm 

I want to know.

Joy was mine as a carefree youth, I spent my coin freely, 

barreling down lanes in the dappled sunlight of the forest, 

Bound for winding paths, breezy lakes, 

trout-filled streams, spreading lawns. 

A bicycle was my badge of freedom, license to roam 

wherever legs could take me, 

"Be back for supper," my only admonition.

Woe was someone else's, over a distant horizon, 

something even elders rarely mentioned, 

or if they did, used tones so hushed they would not dull my day. 

If I lived selfishly, it was due to the cornucopia of Nature, 

her brimming basket from which I ate and drank 

all day long, no thought of the morrow, 

catching glimpses of heaven in the paths l followed. 

And when it rained, the library, always at hand, 

like Nature, unstinting in its generosity.

During term, surrounded by people day and night, 

I sought refuge in the quiet of the woods and lakeside, 

so when summer came, I just stayed longer where I longed to be. 

"What did you do all day? I haven't seen you once." 

"At play in the fields of the Lord," I might have answered, 

though instead I must have said, 

"Nothing much. Went for a bike ride."

Today, looking back on my slow decay through time, I see

I still carry that badge of freedom, the bicycle, though its range 

under my seat, is like that of the poor fish 

in the puddle of the dried up reservoir 

waiting for the rain that doesn't come.

I do have Google Earth, though, 

which allows me to look down on those 

lanes I rode, paths l walked along, lakes I swam. 

Changes, of course, are glaring: more people, 

houses, parking lots, shops, and always, fewer big trees.

Thank God for memory ! Without it, I'd be a pinhead on a stick,

plunked down wherever I happened to be, 

deracinated, an empty crock, 

but full of woe. 

So it's memories now which keep old woe away 

which else would rob my heart of joy.

The ancient Greeks told each other to call no man happy 

until he has died well.

C.S.Lewis extended that precaution to involve experiences: 

No experience is complete 

until it is safely ensconced in memory; then it may be assayed.

I value my good memories (as don't we all?), 

though the few bad ones, about hurting others, 

I would love to leave. 

l'm mindful of Macbeth's agony 

when he's regretting the murders: 

"My way of life is fallen into the sere,” he laments. 

He can expect no friends in his old age, 

just curses, not loud but deep, 

for the harm he's done, 

not that he should have expected to live long anyway, 

unlike most of us today. in spite of our missteps, 

the years we live now give us time enough to experience regret 

of youthful errors, of hurts caused by our too little love.

But there's no point in dwelling on them, those errors; 

they can't be changed. 

Instead, let's conjure up a thousand greens and blues: 

intense blue sky at twelve thousand feet;

deep blue sea off Tintagel's cliffs, greens of beech, oak, 

chestnut, pine, and grass in forest's shade,

flickering sunlight on half closed lids 

under canopy of leaves up high.

Though not historical, these memories, 

they are valid collective or generalized impressions 

from countless experiences, 

and none the less vivid for all that, 

wherein the individual event became 

submerged beyond recognition, beyond recall.

When l've done something countless times,

the details of single instances blend together. 

If they didn't, my mind would become so cluttered 

l'd be unable to think. 

People with total recall must have 

a means of retrieving memories 

Lest they be overburdened by detail.

This dwelling on one's memories, or living in the past, so often called, 

may not be done by choice but by default, 

there being only unpleasantness in the present. 

So why not keep one eye on the road, the other on the past.

What else are two eyes for, anyway?