Handicaps

Handicaps: we have them, each and every one of us.
Too busy with the busy-ness to notice,
Till one day life catches up;
Former choices do no longer;
Slurping, supping, sipping wine and caviar.
What you’ve been, no longer are.
Leg, finger, hand-icap:  
Pand-epi-demi-cap.
Imprisoned and aware
In new surprising ways, forced to adapt:  
Perhaps pace slowed, head bowed,
The lapse of time interpreted anew.

Doings take on an insistence you
Ignored all through the years before;
A not-so-secret cue to more-than-woo a state
Wherein resistance is effete,
Clues lord, you servant.

Yes, we have them in the karma.
They may harm.  They have no charm.
They are the permanent new feature,
You, prisoner and creature
Left to farm this new terrain,
Use its fertility to seed again
A life of happiness;
Fruitfulness no less than it was once:
A handicap turned Ponce de Leon.

Handicaps 4.26.2020 Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin