But
you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown hands
gloved with green.
You
can have the touch of a single eleven-year-old finger
on your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back.
You
can have the purr of the cat and the soulful look
of the black dog, the look that says, If I could I would bite
every sorrow until it fled…
You
can have the life of the mind,
glowing occasionally in priestly vestments, never admitting pettiness,
never stooping to bribe the sullen guard who'll tell you
all roads narrow at the border.
You can speak a foreign language, sometimes,
and it can mean something.
You
can visit the marker on the grave
where your father wept openly.
You
can't bring back the dead,
but you can have the words forgive and forget hold hands
as if they meant to spend a lifetime together.
You
can have the dream,
the dream of Egypt, the
horses of Egypt
and you riding in the hot sand.
You can have your grandfather sitting on the side of your bed,
at least for a while, you can have clouds and letters, the leaping
of distances, and Indian food with yellow sauce like sunrise.
You can't count on grace to pick you out of a crowd
but here is your friend to teach you how to high jump,
how to throw yourself over the bar, backwards,
until you learn about love, about sweet surrender…
And
when adulthood fails you,
you can still summon the memory of the black swan on the pond
of your childhood, the rye bread with peanut butter and bananas
your grandmother gave you while the rest of the family slept.
There
is the voice you can still summon at will, like your mother's,
it will always whisper, you can't have it all,
but there is this.
http://poemhunter.com/poem/you-can-t-have-it-all/
You Can't Have it All
Annis Cassells
But you can have the wide canvas hammock
strung between two trees like a ship out to sea on your grandparents’ hillside.
You can have the giggles of babies, daughters
and nieces,
sharing a tub overflowing with toys and
bubbles.
You can have Topsail sunrises and Morro
Rock sunsets.
You can speak a foreign language, sometimes,
and get the very thing you thought you
ordered.
You can’t have June and Ward Cleaver, but
you can have your dad walking through the house wearing only shaving cream and
boxers and your mom, head in hands, wondering what to have for dinner.
You can have fifty years’ worth of the
first day of school.
You can have the Mediterranean breeze
playfully brushing your breasts on a
topless beach in Nice.
You can have the hum of a motorcycle and
the expanse of the open road beckoning you to follow your passion for new
places. And you can have the open arms
of loved ones to firmly enfold you as you arrive and depart.
You can’t turn back the clock, but you
can reconnect with a childhood friend and feel 45 years in between dissolve
into timelessness.
You can have the dream,
the dream of a wooden dance floor in Barcelona, and you in
costume,
dancing the Flamenco.
You can have arm-in-arm beach walks,
crossword puzzles, the mist off Niagara
Falls, games of hide-and-seek, and fireflies in quart
jars.
And when adulthood fails you and you
think that no one cares,
you can still call forth the memory of
the moment when your father’s unexpected expression of tenderness and love
warmed your teen-aged heart and how your mother was always home to listen when
you came in from school.
There is the voice you can still summon
from your depths;
it will always whisper, you can’t have it
all,
but there is this.
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