Choices

                         I
Looking back over his decisions
He wondered why he had made them
Had he blundered his way thoughtlessly
Or responded to emotional forces
He could not fathom
Or had someone chosen for him

                         II
He had come to prefer things other
Than those which had engaged him
Passion wilts property decays
Vanity fades to loneliness
And that sole survivor illusion
Seems pasty in the light of day

                         III
He felt he had erred
His life displeased him
A life he sensed not of his making
A jointure imposed by another’s hand
Even no hand at all

                         IV
We are urged to make the best of things
(An admonition linked indelicately
To failure or ill-fortune)
But were we to make the worst of things
Would we discern a difference

                          V
We make of things what they make of us
We make that of which we are made
We are scripted performers speaking
A deep language stamped within us
A recitation largely immutable often inscrutable

                          VI
The making rests in our dark recesses
Unfolding with cosmic (or comic) serendipity
Except that each person’s accidents
Contain a uniqueness that defies
The impersonal universe’s adventitiousness

                         VII
He would (would not) have desired
To unfold it differently
An elusive formulation oddly consonant
With his chastened recognition
That he is and is not
The master of his fate

                       VIII
His life carries on almost in his absence
Riddling forth enchantment-like
Through scenes both grey and green
Tenacious illusion clinging still
And the magnetic gleam of decision
Blinding him to its inexorable advance

                         IX
Bravely he looked forward to the next mischance

10/29-10/31, 11/6, 11/18/05, 3/20-3/21, 5/7-5/8, 5/10, 6/26,7/19/06
Copyright 2006 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission