The Manyself, Thirty

You see you are not twenty.

Some of the adult
concerns have
become yours.

They say 30 is young
for a poet. Is it young
for dreaming aloud?

If you’re five, 30 is wild
and ancient, capable of defeating
a dragon or dying any day.

If you’re 65?
30 is a bastion of youth
to well preciously.

The man just emerging
from the tumult and lust
of his twenties sees a world

of guitars
and cash registers singing
a life to obtain.

* * *
How much can a dream

Be a response
to being shaped? The shape
of a true response?

What of a man touching
the edge of dreams he’s made?
there was an old message:

Hold your dream.
No one spoke
of more than one;

that detail skirted because
having the dream- wanting-
is easy. But more follow,

the struggle stands tall
with age, wishes collide
as the heart stretches

to encompass each friend
of the soul, each living word
cast in silver,

to clutch every laugh and song
before it tastes of the past-
and the heart's torridity

fuels from wisdom
to be not oneself but
the Manyself.

Each sliver deserves its journey
and plan for sweet becoming,
just as the countless flowers

for autumn to embrace-
who go hurdling into October knowing
only their own beauty- shining still-

to drop dry and forgotten.
A child of three decades
knows far too much

to drop peacefully.

* * *

Thus settle it simply.

Walk along one path
which winds
to each love in turn,

on a crashing morning
cresting to sunrise,
eyes on a life

of joyous expansion.