From What Remains Poem by jim hogg

There have been moments I admit,
when might have beens meant more to me
than all that destiny might bring,
and comfort in that fantasy

immobilised me for a while;
then out of morketiden came
a forward focussed appetite:
the strangest thing, in middle age.

And after several years of that
the past was gone enough to seem
a safer, less bewitching ark
of stuff that once was all too real:

so thickly strewn with hopes and dreams,
and flaws and biases that blind,
and arrogance, I barely gleaned
the basics of this fleeting life

that led to all those words I've wrung
from what remains. I tried to hold
to things I've seen and things I've done,
to what I've been and what I've sold,

although the truth's much bigger than
the stories that our senses tell,
and more peculiar than I'd grant
if I was younger, I suspect.