Regrettable.

I regret accepting what I should have fought.
Not shouting when they shouted.
Not raising a fist when they yelled.
Not demanding reason as dust settled on disaster.

Wish I’d stiffened sooner, dropped in two cents before it was twenty.
Refused to drink the water offered the thirsty.
Refused to pump a fist for the popular refrain.
Resisted ambition more than it seduced.

Wish I’d seen me the way she saw me.
Enough to change myself into who I was,
Avoiding conviction for who I wasn’t and wouldn’t be.
Wish I’d seen the way she saw me, so I could change and not be.

Wish I’d been the man I set out to be.
Bigger, stronger, tougher, smarter.
Wish I’d made the ideal real, the toil work.
One thing to insist, another to make insistence fact.

Most of all, I regret regrets.
No good toiling in vain to alter time. The past is settled.
Spent runway cannot be used for takeoff.
Spent time is lived at peril to the spender.

Let it go, she said.
And without regret, I listened.

William Sommers is an American poet.