Duane Vorhees writes

ONE ALMOST HAD IT ALL

Never a father.

Mom gone at 6, God at 10,

and friends undependable.

By 14 he was abandoned

by ambition

                                    i.e. greed

                                    i.e. rage

                                    i.e. desire

and then by caution,

then by expectation;

all restraining Order

shed throughout adolescence.

And so, at 20, finally,

                        the sage

released his winged virginity,

his last fettered vestige of convention,

and, thus, root- and boot- less,

unworldly godfree the youth

                                                w/o hope

                                                w/o remorse

poised on the ledge,

readied himself –

the world his world for the grasping,

that turquoise marble.

Well past his middle now

the weary cynic

stays

incomplete,

unshuckable;

a last aging snakeskin

contains him yet,

cuffs him to illusion,

thwarts his liberty.

Diamond innocence

alas

still clings,

its flinty integrity

intact.

Dismal.

Inviolate.