ON SIGNIFYING ONE’S LIFE

What does not frighten the young boy will seldom

grow to torment the man he must soon become.

Sitting on a porch on a humid autumn

evening I thought about this and in doing

so unleashed a torrent of distant memories.

Though childhoods grown are never perfectly lived,

the moments that sustained us are those moments

that offered small comforts and securities.

Thoughts of wars, wives, the context of adult lives,

the setbacks and the gains, the joys and the pains,

were given short reprieve by this autumn sky.

On the last day of my return to the home

they say we can’t return to, this Texas night

was taking me back to a distant time when

sitting on another porch, where life gave us

a safe haven from nature’s more violent side,

we watched in awe as the sky pounded it’s chest.

Tonight it afforded me a return to

those moments of comfort and security

when thunder and chain lighting strutted their best.

But as the awe returned reflections followed,

compelling me to consider the autumn

of a life being lived from Point A through B,

while thunder turned to metaphor to taunt me

now as "a tale told by an idiot, full

of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

What frightens a grown man is his fear that his

life lived has not signified nearly enough.