THE MAN WHO MET HIMSELF

I’m writing a new short story entitled, “The Man Who Met Himself.”

Below are the three stanzas of verse that I wrote this morning to introduce the story. At the conclusion of the story I will include one more stanza of verse as an endnote or epilogue.

THE MAN WHO MET HIMSELF

The Man Who Met Himself went fishing for a different type of man
He caught himself by wishing that his nature would expand
He found that deep within him were a host of other men
He took then to a’sending them where first he did begin
The backwards part of forward is the end of where you start
The Child is just the cargo of the harbor where you part

The Man Who Met Himself went searching for the men within his breast
He observed them often lurching full of futures and bequests
He lost them when they struggled in the foreign lands they roamed
That discovery was smuggled where they made their cunning homes
The sideways part of never is the always where you aren’t
The Young Man ain’t as clever if he knows his only part

The Man Who Met Himself went looking where he’d never looked before
His reflected indiscretion mistook him – for a Janus-Headed Door
For beyond that canny threshold was a clever mewling Muse
Who sang to him of fresh souls that he never could refuse
The downwards side of Up There is the place you’ve yet to be
Can the Old Man find that somewhere is the One who sets him free?