I know you’ll want to describe in your poem
How full the pews were at my funeral service,
Full of people I was able to give some hope
About their addictions when no one else could.
You’ll want to say that it all goes back
To my persuading the angry man I was,
Alone in prison, to set aside, after ten years,
The metaphor of life as a battle
And take up, for the second half of my bid,
The metaphor of a voyage.
But you’re only guessing, as I would be,
If you try to say how I did it.
No doubt my struggle in prison
Not to blame others for my behavior
Helps to explain my success in prodding
Others to accept their responsibility.
No doubt I said on one of your visits,
“The day I forget the man I killed
Is the day I begin to die.” But it’s also true
I had to forgive myself enough,
After years of gloom, to take the courses
That let me graduate from the prison college.
And who can say how I managed it,
How, while holding on to the past, I let go?
I’m only guessing myself. Yes, I can tell you,
To borrow your figure, that something urged me
To grab the tiller and hoist my sail,
Some glimpse of a future glimmering near the horizon.
But who knows how I recognized it as mine,
Mine to have if I made an effort to reach it,
When it seemed so distant,
So far from the life I’d known before?
in memory of John Hemmers