What I don't know is why this poem
is called what it is called.
It's called "Not the Waves as They Make Their Way Forward."
And Virgil is in it briefly and Marcus Aurelius, but you
don't have to know anything.
So I'm just saying it.
It feels scary and that it's not.
It's so much of life.
Not the Waves as They Make Their Way Forward.
Like Virgil, Marcus Aurelius died
believing that his triumphs, when
pitched against his failures, had come to very little.
I don't know.
Given the messiness of most lives,
humble, legendary, all the rest in between, their interiors,
I mean, it's hard to say he was wrong.
Black night, black train, freight of worries.
Things that stay the same.
Having reached that point that even
the luckiest sometimes never get close to,
where desire at last offers nothing more nor less
than what restrained can.
Marcus Aurelius wrote down some thoughts meant apparently only
for himself, though, they became meditations.
A book without, which by now, he'd pretty much be forgotten.
It begins with gratitude.
How it ends is painful.
If I'm remembering right, but it isn't pain.
I do recommend reading Marcus Aurelius every fall.
I do.
It's not very long.
It gives you a real perspective.