Beginner’s Tale
In a remote rural library
a young man weds ideals
and vows to father them real.
Waiting tables, digging diches,
organizing unions, managing a diner, he clings:
People must sing.
Friends, one by one,
knee him to silence.
He burrows into business
and buries old differences.
Self-divorced, words deformed,
he dismantles the role
too breezily assumed
as if a mask were solution.
He catches art classes at night
and crafts some repose through the insight
that he had saved himself
by fleeing into
some new trap’s arms,
but at least now he knows
there’s nowhere else to go.
On days off, snug at home,
he putters with mementos,
not to reform shed skins,
but blend what’s been.
© G.H. Mosson
G. H. Mosson is the author of five books and chapbooks of poetry, including the chapbooks Simultaneous Revolutions (PM Press, forthcoming May 2021) and Family Snapshot as a Poem in Time (Finishing Line Press 2019). He is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, four-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize, and has work has appeared nationally in The Tampa Review, The Cincinnati Review, Measure, Smartish Pace, The Potomac Review, and The Evening Street Review. He also is an experienced public speaker. A lawyer and father, Mr. Mosson lives in Baltimore County, Maryland. For more, see www.ghmosson.com.
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