Poems by Terry Savoie

 

The Ancients

           sang of the desired Middle Way,
instructing us not to lean too far this way

or that, but rather schooling how best to favor
moderation's center line down any highway, byway

or country backroad with gravel shoulders on either side
or, perhaps, a road with no shoulders at all as we’re hoping

to reach home before dark, maintaining a steady pace ahead of
hordes arriving at the city's barricaded gates to let us know what’s

what when we slip up, taking immoderate excess to find ourselves
wallowing, now in peril of losing those hard-earned joys of our

disciplined life and not going off the deep end to end up un-
happily flailing, treading heavy waters, the sudsy, roiling
 
Aegean Sea, as it washes over us and, per chance,
dragging us far under into the deep. Thus, we

attempt to survive this miserable life, not
swinging hard to the right or the left

while hanging on desperately to
so-called advice, a dried-up

husk of motherly attempt
to have us hang on for-

ever to her overused
saccharine clichés.

 

Apotheosis

Hadrian, knowing how,
    in death, he'll be-
come a god,

    holds on
to each breath
    as long as humanly

possible, not wishing
to let go,
    to let go, to

        go …