Youth

[Caleb Murdock]

Something ineffable in youth
```Draws my thoughts and evokes
A quiet longing in my soul;
```Not that I miss mine, no —

It was not ever as it ought
```Have been (by all accounts),
Hard as I tried to be care-free
```Amidst my grief and loss.

Some ineffable perfection
```In the curves of girls' thighs,
In the head-long rush of boys to their
```Predestined reckonings,

Bespeaks powers no longer mine —
```Not ever mine, perhaps,
Nor theirs now, though it appears so
```To hungry mortal eyes

Like mine, mesmerized by the sight
```Of youth's trail vanishing.
Yet if youth could be mine today,
```It would be in my way.

I would not trade my life and times
```For any that have passed;
But in my poems, I am young,
```And I will last.

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I considered this poem to be finished until I realized that the second line of the last stanza didn't have the right meaning. It seems to me that the lives I am envying are not the ones that have passed, but the ones still to be lived. So I re-wrote that stanza like this:

I would not trade my life and times
```For any still to come;
But in my poems, I will last,
```And I am young.

Which is better?

Don't worry, not all my poems are about youth and age. I tend to choose tiresome topics.