It's not about how many times I knock you down.
It's about how many times you hold out your hand so I can help you back up.


When you're wrong you learn something new.
When you're right, you learn nothing.

My mentor spoke to me of two rivals,
Once, they had been friends in some distant past.
But the years have eaten their love and made grudges manifest.
|The two shattered into broken glass

To my wise master I asked only one,
One question... In all my range.
One question I asked:
“What changed?”

In the outskirts, at the home of my daughter
Where you can stare at the stars or passing cars
None more brighter than the other,
We share memories of my grandmother.
In the photographs, she looks so much younger.
Not frail, but a fighter, lover and saintly|

To me, she asks plainly,
One question, and one question only.
Sifting through the ages of years past:
“What Changed?”

At the kitchen table, feeling inadequate,
My lover screaming and frustrated,
I recall memories when we had been intimate.
Times when movement was made for desire and not duty
|A calendar of nights left in confused abstinence

I interrupt.
She delays rage.
I beg,
“What Changed?”

_

In the last few hours of night
The dawn reaches me at last.
I had locked moments-
Literal seconds of time as the truth.
But it was always changing
In flux and morphing.
Turning into something new
Just for a moment, and then on again
“What Changed?”
Everything.
Always.

too many poems
too many poets
describing the
same **** feelings
and yet
throughout the centuries
none of us
have ever found
the right words