"I suspect that the way I feel now, at summer’s end, is about how I’ll feel at the end of my life, assuming I have time and mind enough to reflect: bewildered by how unexpectedly everything turned out, regretful about all the things I didn’t get around to, clutching the handful of friends and funny stories I’ve amassed, and wondering where it all went. And I’ll probably still be evading the same truth I’m evading now:
that the life I ended up with, much as I complain about it, was
pretty much
  the one I chose. And my dissatisfactions with it are really with my own character, with my hesitation and timidity."

Tim Keider^
~~~

just an ordinary Sunday newspaper feature,
on the summer's fast approaching
summing up,
an essay,
that you read and exclaim
***,
what's that you say,
Keider,
who ya kidding?

are our brains cross-wired?
am I so prototypical
that my scheming privates are presented with
better clarity, superior style, and

and you just don't know what's worse

a) that we shared the similarity of dissatisfaction
with our lives,
that a season of unexpected leisure unexpectedly
(an unforced error, I'll call it)
opportunitized
a  soul train review that time accident-afforded and
summer sweet lushness conduced
or

b) is it that you say it so much better

only one diff kid,
entire we deux,
that makes me major league,
and you still, a sorta minor,
with a career ahead

I am at
trend end
of my life,
skiing breakneck at the steepest part of the
downward ***** of time
leading to the flatline gate
knockdown finale

but I still can't let us off the hook,
as I write this
open outcry

did life's press offer us
convergent excuses,
the connivence of convenience
that let us write our own
sad, sneering, almost denying tale
that our lives were
"pretty much"
the one chosen

will that truthfully ever going to be
a genuine smithy's mark
of
a twenty four caratexcellence of
sufficiency satisfactory?

the question cannot be begged off,
when Father Time is breathing down your neck,
accepting one's character flaws,
acknowledging, not even querying,
if I am a failed diamond,
I, the cutter,
could not shape my facets
flawless, or even well enough

point passed,
now why me worry
about hesitating,
timidity,
so no evasion,
instead ****** head-on 
invasion

the life chosen
was oft the product of
wrong fork chosen,
lazy and safe courses that
cuckolded me into a
blindsided acceptance

last verse I swear!

going outside to
come back in
pervaded

let this declining season,
be not
seen as an ending
but a fresh bloom of a flower,
an all-year-long bloom
that opens up every morning
of every day,
readying us both
for the
and to
fall,
open to  
setting the pushed, not pulled,
record straight

"good enough"
is no longer
good enough
when  answering

my life, was it any good?
was it what I desired?

when I took the wrong fork
almost every time,
though purposely chosen,
was it cowardice complete,
laziness course of least resistance?

for if that's the case,

no matter how late we linger at this bad food table,
of inactive actions,
choices taken but not accepted,
I need to change
the diet
that creates
who I am
and eat truth,
raw,
and keep it down