A Middle Aged Orpheus Looks Back at his Life
        for Kris & Lisa Kristofferson

I took my voice to places where no man
Should take his voice and hope that it would sing.
All I wanted when I began
Was to strike up my guitar and do my thing.
Haunted from home, I sang my song
While all around forgot their words and fell;
In the underworld I blundered on
In regions where not it, but I, was hell.

I took my voice to places where no man
Should take his voice and hope that it would sing;
I paid the price in lines that rhyme and scan,
The last illusion to which singers cling
Before they yield their song up to the truth
They thought they could outsing in foolish youth.

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Copyright © 2019 Gabriel Fitzmaurice All rights reserved
from Smitten Soul: Illuminating the Dark
Salmon Poetry
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission