Poet Phil Repko Wishes for More Lives to Live

by Phil Repko*

Sometimes poems appear out of nowhere. This one comes in response to circumstances that have materialized over the past few years.

Before the pandemic, and after, there were omens and causes for grave concern. But while on vacation in August, with all three children, their spouses, and all 7 grandchildren in the splendor of Lake Ariel, it occurred to me that I should take stock of the blessings that we have been granted.

1. Grandchild 8 is on the way.
2. One family managed to move to a larger property to accommodate the arrival of child number 3. 3. That same family improved its financial profile through changes in job, status, or both.
4. Another one of the children's families weathered multiple job changes, and came out on the other side in a significantly different and better financial prospectus.
5. The third family - the one getting ready to welcome a child - completely abandoned careers in the hospitality field in favor of a fresh start in brand new field of work. Both parents have improved their status and relative security, though they will have to solve a giant concern with different housing in response to a need for more space.
6. My wife was able to purchase the building in which her business has been set for the past twenty years. She has been paying rent to herself the past few years, and looking for a tenant for the barber shop/hair salon whenever that space becomes available.
7. And I, because health care costs make retirement impossible at this time, have landed in a position with more financial security than I have ever had in my life.

Makes you wish you had more lives to live, right?

Leaving the Woods

Who’d have ever thought
given the history
that I would bear regret -
not overlosses
or laments for chances missed -
but solely for the fact

That I do not have several more lives to live.

Thoreau was blessed in ways
he may have never known.

How does one live a life,
shift gears to drive another,
and still find pasture
ready for fresh tilling?

I have been bound in a nutshell
all my only life -

Proscribed by mine own
narrow mind from opening
my eyes, the doors, a shade?

Yet here I sit in a rocker by the window,
Sun-kissed by a
                                       snide subjunctive mood -

I still worry and I stammer.
hesitate to take a rapid step,

unsure the ligaments will
hold my stride as tightly as this hope -

My Achilles heel is Time,
which grows more rigid as it shortens.
so I move more gingerly --
as balance is a theorem,

                                         not a given.

But, oh had I one more chance to
reinvent who I will be when I grow up?

The next life promises to be a revelation.

* Phil Repko is a career educator in the PA public school system who has been writing for fun and no profit since he was a teenager. Phil lives with his wife Julie in Gilbertsville and is the father of three outstanding children, two of whom are also poets and writers. He vacillates between poetry and prose, as the spirit beckons, and is currently working sporadically on a novella and a memoir.

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