In Patient

You stunk at thinking
About the landing.
You tried. You worried,

But it was daunting,
Likely to go bad,
And, if you thought hard,

You’d never be brave
And stupid enough
To try any jump.

You studied the board
Too long and then moved
Too impulsively.

You passed on the gaps
In traffic, anxious,
Until you gunned it

In desperation
When there was no gap.
You read all the signs,

All the maps, guidebooks,
And memoirs, until
You felt bewildered

And then you just left,
Which never worked out,
And so now you’re back.

Primeval Mercies

You go back and forth—
Sports, poems, novel, sky,
Novel, sports, poems, sky.

You’re looking for us,
The ones that will rise
Like the lake sturgeon,

To scrape our scales clean
On the shallow rocks.
There are many lakes—

In the news, the books,
The air, blue with clouds,
Adorable air

You can’t worship now
In such discomfort
While you search for us.

About Those Adults

You grew up thinking about the adults
Evaluating you, and then your peers,
But if you’ve lived more than half

A century even, not that much,
It begins to dawn on you, you will
Be evaluated and found wanting,

More rarely admired, more frequently
Forgotten, by tomorrow’s children
And their children’s children,

While the adults for whose approval
You trained are gone already, mostly
Forgotten by you, their evaluating child.