The Poems I Wrote

All the poems I didn’t manage to write

are in God’s nightstand, beside God’s bed.

And all the poems that I did manage to write

are in mine, beside mine.

And longing to remember who I once was

I can take them out a winter night—

a flocked Tuesday in December—

sit up in my bed and read them.

They are full of other nights, & women,

And why, I wonder, recalling them,

did I ever lose my simple way, and age?

Even the mirror betrays me:

I attempt comfort with what I look like

now, but it’s another man, uglier

than I am: tired, fearful, thickened.

But the poems that I did write

remind me that I lived while I was young.

My friend Janni selling life insurance

in drab Des Moines only has his wife.

I’ve written poems,

and they are truer than memories.

The hands of the clock my father left me

sweep to oblivion. My poems don’t.

                                      Tony D’Souza