ILL-DISPOSED TOWARD WHAT I LOVE THE BEST

ILL-DISPOSED TOWARD WHAT I LOVE THE BEST

 

Ill-disposed toward what I love the best.

The afterlife of a lightning bolt is a crack in a mirror.

The short straw of a lifeline that was bent on revelation.

Such is the world.

The seeing goes on without me.

I can’t hasten a vision that’s already out of time.

But when I’m truly bad

there’s something infectious

about the sublimity of my laughter.

When I was a kid in a garbage-can

all I wanted to do was get to the stars.

And it’s all these years later like eyes without eyelids

and I’m still walking around on earth

as if I were on the wrong side of the light.

Young I aspired to be something.

Chrome on the bumper of an ideal.

Older I realize what I am was never my idea.

And there’s so much to miss that I am still unworthy of

even when I grieve

and things that my cowardice is still true to

that my courage doesn’t believe.

 

PATRICK WHITE