Puer Blood
A confession
Who are you, golden-haired boy?
Eternally young and spritely
With mischief in your eye
You and I are much alike
Two peas in a pod
Bursting with creativity
Blessed with the ability
To journey betwixt realms
Touched by the divine
We’re of a like mind
Gifted and taciturn
Prone to layabouts and pouts
Never satisfied, but ever reluctant
To press our backs into the grind
I confess, at never having
To chase you
And this ease provided me
With an illusion
A convenient pretext
For my languid ways
It was so easy to see
Every failure as a flaw in others
It was never us
Because we had so much to offer
You were the first obstacle on the path
And the hardest to let go
I could say
I chose to stow you away
My sun, on a rainy day
But truth is far more cruel
And we both know it
You’re as much a part of me
As my upper lip
Both too frail to cross
Between man and boy we oscillate
Thoughts scatter and vacillate
puer and senex
Wrest the yoke
And take their turn at the tiller
Where it is mine to steer
To pull myself together
And stay the squabbles
To arrest the bickering siblings
Or ward them away in some corner
Banished in temporary confines
Out of mind
Fie! Away with you!
Back to your daydreams and fantasy
Scurry into your boundless sunny meadow
And await my call
The Old Man and I
Will be tending to business
On the mountain
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Liked this a lot. Thanks.
Oh, this one made me smile, and then made me wince a little. 😄 There is something very familiar about that part of us that is wonderfully gifted in theory and somehow less enthusiastic when it comes to the actual work.
I love the honesty here, especially the admission that it was convenient to blame the obstacles outside rather than look too closely at the one inside. We’re very good at constructing explanations that allow us to keep believing in our potential without having to test it too much.
And I like that there is affection underneath all of this. You’re not really trying to get rid of that younger, more unruly self. Maybe you can’t. Maybe the trick is simply knowing when to listen to him and when to say, alright, enough now… we have things to do. 😄