This Man I am Today
Shedding neurosis and expectations brings peace
I can’t bargain as I once did.
Age is a trembling road where a
heat haze drifts in front of eyelids.
Everything undulates.
Mortality has lost its way
certainty with it. Death had
simply never occurred to me
until I reached 50—
I had thought I was one of the
immortals, guilty of watching too
many films, but now I see filters
funnelling the options, many paths closed.
I shall never run fast and win a medal nor
shall I be Prime Minister of Great Britain.
She would say it when I was a boy —
‘You’ll be in Downing Street some day.’
Mothers think their sons
can do anything, then come at them
with a scythe — take legs
& confidence away. Absent fathers
most often make their sons pay.
Where is the man I was supposed to be?
It’s no matter. I have grown to like
the quiet & gentle man I became.
Copyright Simon Heathcote
This is a response to my friend Mustapha’s post:
https://medium.com/the-poetry-hub/echoes-of-the-soul-a-journey-of-rediscovery-b08adadd31d0
Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this poem, be sure to follow our publication for more thought-provoking and inspiring pieces.
