Of which age do I come?
On which day?
I don’t understand this,
for it seems to me that
men
are always
coming of age.
There are only
new times
new similarities
and
old changes
mixing with variation.
A
bubble
of maybes,
this life
I lead.
Coming of age
is holding aloft your
first born son
and
burying your father,
doing both with a hearty laugh
and tears of joy.
Men,
it seems to me,
are always
coming of age.
Every day he does not
understand,
he comes of age
anew.
© Alfred W. Smith Jr.
