August 2022
73 years 6 months
In my pretentious sophistication,
at twenty-two, I watched A Clockwork Orange.
I unraveled in ways I didn’t know existed,
but pretended otherwise.
Deeply shaken, I thought the world had shifted,
that something had died,
that something malevolent was coming.
I vomited that night.
Innocence is gone.
Age does that, a little here, a little there.
So do books and broken toys,
and those special toys spirited away
by our mothers when we weren’t looking;
the news, frustrations, and betrayals by
parents who should have loved their children
without question, without abuse.
Lest I become a resentful old man,
I must forgive them every day.
There was innocence and wonder
and imagination, then a need for comfort in an
uncomfortable world, a longing for something
of past good feelings seen through the lens
of life’s experiences, craving meaning
and connection, a Calling from the Wilderness.
At sixty-three, I entered one path
that opened into wonder, gazing
at the Milky Way or standing in awe
of nature’s primitive and beautiful places
and terrifying forces; and another
into the journey seeking the Divine,
the ultimate of the Sacred Mystery.
Walked simultaneously,
in and out of shadow and light,
with both love and suffering,
twisting, overlapping, merging together
until now, at this place, I arrived
better than I was yesterday.
~Marc A. Crowley
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