Vacation Poem

Pour It Out

What we start with is not limitless.

The cask is not an abyss.

But I have always said: “Pour yourself out young man!”

Don’t be stingy;

Dispense yourself into many vessels

Don’t hoard it all within fortified castles

Allocate on the fly, improvise---- and soon.

A life can’t be meted out with a teaspoon;

A bit here, a splash there, a shot glass, a snifter, a highball, a mug runneth over with foamy head.

All these empty cups to be filled!

Choose them at your leisure.

Choose wisely and always pour with pleasure.

Cups for love, for work, for hobbies, for nothing, for something, for purses or mittens or coats,

For things forgotten and things that lodge in our throats.  

----But pour it all out we must

Have no pity for the obsessive workaholic; he has poured himself out

No mourning for the hollow eyed doctor wandering wards at night; he has poured himself out

Laugh not at the perpetually broken hearted; she has poured herself out

And never mock the failed poets; they too have all poured themselves out

They leave nothing to grieve.

They are empty bottles of wine sprawled like bowling pins

In alleys the morning after New Year’s Eve.

The only sin in lost time

Is leaving too much behind;

Trying to ration a vast reservoir,

Always in fear of having no more.

You save what’s left for a wave that never crests;

All that ambrosia sloshing around in your chest

---Untapped.

6/5/17