Few Learn This - James Humphrey

Few Learn This
For Robert Creeley (1926-2005)
In loving memory

One

Most unable to get along
with the same person
same rooms
for
long
steady periods.

Nobody
can
be
the
right
person
for
you
if
you’re
not
right
with
yourself.

It’s only
when
we quit blaming
innocent partners
and we accept
our responsiilities
in problems,
that the reality
of our limits
begin
crushing
the unattainable fantasies
of eroticism and lust.

Two

Marriage doesn’t
make us better,
anymore than it makes
us worse;
it intesifies
what is already there,
both for
good and bad.

If you’ve
grown emotionally
as you
become older, you
learn we must
give more
of what we are
than what we have;
that only
love, after all
its trials,
is now fuller and
allows you feelings
touching completeness.

Three

What finally
defeats the person
who doesn’t
seperate
love
and
eroticism,
is believing
their
weaknesses
are
strengths.

Four

Time’s a thief,
and life
seldom rewards
the courageous few.

The breeze blows
brittle through autumn’s
tree-clustered
bright leaves,
reminding me of flowers
at the meager
burial sights
of the exceptional few
who turned
their feelings
of love
into action.

Only they now know
what is written
inside
the rings of trees.

***