One more time. If I'm granted entrance into the fray --

I stand enthusiastic, flexing lightly, waiting for

the drugs of disregard to sizzle through my limbs

and, poised for modest heroism,

I toe up to the edge.

I've been skirting the periphery,

in the name of taking stock,

as if I knew that the revelry and

sweet pain of commitment

amassed a secret debt

greater than any success could pay.

Once burned with the self image of desperate purpose

all else seems the maintenance of lesser service,

like so much in forgotten process.

But the corner of my eye

reveals a specter I wished to avoid,

who murmurs

that all these things are as significant as

ants evaluating paths and to grasp at passion

is a foray into the highest self-indulgence.

Does that make life's values best served

by a tepid eulogy?

Is a selfless art of discipline to some

deeper flow (and afterward you shrug as if

you had no part) the best of what we hoped

was grander purpose?

I still stand here,

girdled in imagined choice,

no testing of the waters, expectant

of the rippling power when life's balance

is skewed onto a needle's point.

How like a child who stayed overlong at the magic show

I am dragged home to some clearer view,

No need to lose the rest of life, the sum of all parts yields true.

I ache to bend to such mature lesson

while the specter whispers

the focus of grand indulgence

is only the brightest bauble of illusion.

When my eyes look skyward

my body weightless in the dive

I thumb my nose at all their stodgy caution.