What You Regain

*A response, of a sort, to an older poem I wrote entitled, "What You Leave Behind".

What you regain comes piecemeal if at all.
It is buckling knees at breakfast
When you can hold the coffee cup
With the smirking deftness of youth.
It is the sky as never before, a blue empire,
A vault of limpid velor that stirs
The nascent spirits of gratitude.
What you regain comes piecemeal if at all.

It has arrived on the swath of sunlight raising
The sober eye of a coherent Saturday.
It lives in the hopeful lapse of my consent,
The unguarded fatigue
That reproaches the self and opens the human heart.
It stands in the totem of touch,
The unruly memory of the body
Kinetic and reborn
And breathes in the tactile embrace
That harbors the strength
To share another's burden.
What you regain comes piecemeal if at all.

I know there will be more poems
But I need something different now.
Mere oratory alone will not rebuke my compass
And recant the articles of faith
That steered me away
From what I truly deserved.

Even if it might only be for a moment,
I have reclaimed all I ever deserved.