I could tell you a version of my life
that would be intriguing, but would it be
true? In just under seven decades,
memories are viewed through
a prismatic lens of dazzling colors
or in black and white depending,
and I think it has perhaps always
been thus;
To retrieve fodder from far back requires
I plumb the mind of a child, dazzled
by a world of human behavior she never
understood, coming in, as she did,
with a certain clueless high mindedness
and expectations of how things
ought to be;
And I was not perfect, not by a hearty
stretch, I recall both mistreatment
from others but also a secret meanness
in myself, cavalier with my mother in ways
I would never be now, safe to make fun of her
then, taking for granted that unconditional
love and acceptance; I could do little wrong,
and I know now how fortunate I was;
So easy to find fault with those we know
love us without reservation, so facile to treat
our beloveds with praise or scorn, parsing
out kindness like breadcrumbs for hungry birds,
not realizing, until perhaps too late, the nature
of our own blunders, products of an overinflated
sense of self importance in a world starved
for kind words and deeds given simply now
from a heart filled with the sublime grace
and benevolent perceptions of others.

With my brothers in Yosemite, 1959