Second Chance Poem by David Harris

Sometimes you never get a second chance
at anything you do.
If one day you do, embrace it
and never let it slip through your fingers
or it will never come to you again.
Now this is my story of the two second chances that I got
and how I embraced them without regret.
The story begins half a century ago when I was a teenager.
I was a very shy boy
and my friends were very few,
especially where the girls were concerned.
No friendships grew there
and all too soon they were gone
without me ever saying a word to them
as I left and set sail for a far distant shore.
Their faces remained with me
through the years in photographs.
The years slipped by so quickly
from teenager to adult hood,
but still those photographs
kept the past alive to me.
Always hoping one day,
I would be able to see them over again.
More years slipped by
and the chances of that happening
became just as remote as could be,
or so I thought.
Then on the 15 December 2006,
I had an internal message on classmates.com
and that is where the first of my two second chances began.
The second came shortly afterwards
when this classmate introduced me to her friend,
whose encouraging words made me take
the second of my second chances
and on the 19th January 2007 I lifted my pen to paper
after six or seven years
and never looked back since then.
Since that date, I have written
one thousand four hundred and twenty eight poems,
a novel and published my first book.
All because of the second chances, I got.
If you are given a second chance
at anything at all,
grasp them with all your might,
never letting them go
because you will probably never get them again.

22-23 November 2008