The Lost Decade (2003)

There are years this pen
turns a blind ear to—
as decade lost to ink—
Dunno if I’m just evasive,
or don’t know what to think—
Years as both husband
and father, a bland symmetry
of hard days digging deep—
mending hours of
time’s unbindings
walled back inevitably
as sleep.
I learned of limits then—
how much to learn, or ear,
in a single day—how far
you can love on dry
and dryer balls, & how duty
marries remorse to build
a sad, too-shaken home
which we all departed from
and I now rarely think upon.
My daughter of that age is
now 25 — a mother of two
with a man of her own —
for six years she and I cobbled
up a heart we knew as ours,
and tended it as best we could.
But now we rarely speak—
I left her behind in
loyalty to new love,
but sometimes I wonder how
I can prove anything at
that remove — what on
earth there is left to do —
but then I pet my cat
Violet & she looks fondly back
and I know it’s all one motion,
one beach, forever all I lack.