Old Man’s Lived/Unlived Life
Dear friend, I hope you are well. I’m pleased to share another of my existential poems with you. This time, I chose an elegiac tone for my poem about an insufficiently inhabited life. I think many of us may confront the situation the poem describes in our later years. Seeing life swiftly pass you by and how it finds you in your older years has moved poets and philosophers to express their feelings at such a significant turn in their lives.
As always, I cordially invite you to enrich the conversation with your comments on this poem.
Thank you.
Peace and love.
Sal.
Old Man’s Lived/Unlived Life
(A poem by Sal Godoij.)
The old man
Doesn’t look towards his future.
He looks inwards towards his past.
Searching for the answers he never found outside
But which he could have found within himself
Had he asked them in time.
Like a branch of a broken tree
Floating in a white-water torrent
Dragged by the force of the current
Battering against the rocks
Unable to break free
Thus he went through his life.
The old man
Follow with heart-rending nostalgia
The swaying gait
Of women on the street
Women that marked his life
He still feels the carving left in his bones by his urges
Yet dismisses it all with a shrug.
The old man
Gives a painful glance at his shadow
His trembling steps challenging the rush of time
Ashes now cover the embers that sparkled in his pupils
Which used to reflect sunrises and sunsets
Lightning and moonlight.
He weeps
Bright dew droplets feed the withered flowers of his memories.
The old man
Has stories to tell.
Stories that none of the younger ones will ever believe
Although they push to go out, he silences them
For these stories are his, and only his
Silent witnesses in his safe lonely harbour
Ruminations of his yearnings
Relapses of his adolescence.
