My Life

A meditation the poet summoned in his darkest days in Venice, soon after his divorce from his first wife, his estrangement from his beloved daughter and his physical and financial exile. Oh, and the Panther was playing her "I'm in, I'm out" games. He began to doubt his purpose, his passion, his life. Then, this came to him, one morning as he lay awake, staring into an uncertain future.

My Life

My life. It is my life to make of it what I choose.
I will win, and lose
and smile more often than not.
Courage will give me hope. Hope will give me
strength. And strength
will give me the courage to seek new truths.

And I will never love without a sense
of wonder and awe at the
infinite possibilities within the human heart...
and the beauty of dreams, held iron and ironic
within even the most tragic
fall from grace and the dreams of the damned.

And I will not be given to despair, for I have stood
in fires I could not fathom
and held my breath until death seemed sibling
to the pain within my soul. For this experiment
of my life will have validity
within the scientific method of the universe.


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.