Regrets

May 3, 2004
Writer’s Cramp Prompt

REGRETS

In the desolate graveyard of risks not taken,
Stands the tree your mother had forsaken.

Swinging from branch, the rope and the dare,
Your face flaming as though you didn’t care.

Blowing, tumbling between the cenotaph,
A love letter crumpled, and forgotten with a laugh.

Piled against the fence the flotsam
Of education not finished, not began.

Draped over the gravesite a blanket of time,
Not spent with family, career sublime.

Buried below, the unborn, for which you wept,
And the secret you thought better off kept.

Shuffling down the long gravel lane,
A bent and withered old man came,

Wizened by the ides of life,
Here to visit his long-lost wife.

Attenuated fingers brushed over the stone,
Teary eyed, dejected, he emits a moan.

“Expressed my heart, my love I should have raved.
Now it’s another risk untaken in the grave.”