Maybe for the Last Time
24 October 2025
https://poems.culturing.net/2025/10/maybe-for-the-last-time/
With a spark I remember another flame,
one forbidden by time and place
and another man. I cannot understand
why these feelings, these urgings, these warm
protestations against a cold fate, as her eros
peeks through every word, and I dare
to become so disturbed that I dream of her,
me, in another time, place, which is never to be.
Do dreams heal us or sicken what feels sick already?
What hope is there really for arrival, for destination,
for we storm-tossed, adjacent to the madness of the gods?
It just cannot be reconciled, no, not this soul
and that eros, not here and not anywhere,
never and not near forever nor always, alone
in a word, yet disturbed nonetheless by the playful flirtation
which surely was meant without harm.
--
But I grow from it into a better man.
Maybe "healed" is too strong, but "improved" could be said
and believed. Must we look to one older to teach
what can only be learned in the trying, from making mistakes?
Can we offer this gift to one younger?
--
We must pay it forward, the knowledge
of how to behave and to love even those
of the opposite sex. It has never been easy,
and how many times has this lesson been learned incompletely,
for how many loves are a farce, just a pale imitation
without any meat on their bones?
But we learn most by doing, and even a playful imagining
serves as a kind of practice, a sacred arena
of self-discovery, where souls can mingle without repercussions.
But does she know that she offers this gift, or does she
by instinct entice out of me that part of a man
that would like to learn love from hate, to distinguish
these modes of intensity, and perhaps combine them
in something more grounded, a human endeavor
to make one from two, which must always cause friction
but also makes living worthwhile...?
--
In the end, I'm not sure what to make
of this feeling, perhaps one-sided, perhaps even pathological,
and so I am grateful but cautious. She may not know
that what she awakens is capable of callous cruelty,
and this by design, for a man must have war within him
if he is to build a home and protect it, and always
he brings that capacity indoors too. She must learn
to respect it, as I also learn what it means to have peace
at the end of a long day, when the sun passes over the edge
of adventure, maybe for the last time.
