Acceptance
by Garth Kirkwood
Poignant regrets of true identity
Burden his heart and soul quite heavily:
To know his silences were not restraint
But voids of absence gray, a dismal paint;
(For those well seasoned who’d employed restraint,
‘Twas nice cover for their own troubling taints.)
To know his somber stigma gravely fixed
More closely than stigmata’s painful licks,
Cheerily camouflaged except from those
Whose eyes could focus plumb behind his pose;
(Of these, a few portrayed ignoble plots
Acquiring skill in taking cheap, cheap shots.)
To know all this, unable to change what’s past,
Futile, the present tense to soon be past
But not just yet. He takes some time to stare
Languishing, sadness seems to draw him there,
His world of never knowing what he wanted,
Important choices not allowed undaunted.