C’est la Vie
Sum up a lifetime in just fourteen lines?
Ten minutes’ work, I’m sure, no more, no less.
Do justice to sharp summits, dull declines,
unlooked-for joys, unmerited distress.
Great gifts that never came to anything,
the skills that always missed their proper use,
the things I should have dropped to which I cling,
the things I should have kept which I let loose.
What else? Relationships? Qualifications?
First love, last love, and odd stuff in between:
friendships, acquaintances, infatuations,
dreams, memories, fantasies, the primal scene,
books, music, stories, let the list extend –
and then, quite unexpectedly, the end.
“C’est La Vie” first appeared in erbacce.
The way Mike Rogers finds it hard to write anything but sonnets feels to him like a form of OCD. He has been a University Lecturer in German Language and Literature. 1972-1999; a supply teacher, 2001-2013; a storyteller (sometimes paid), 2002-present. He has also taken part in amateur dramatics since age 13 (but storytelling’s easier, because you don’t have to learn the lines or worry about anybody else). His poetry production increased dramatically after he inherited a weekly workshop in 2019 and ran it on Zoom through Covid. His work has appeared in Snakeskin and Blue Unicorn.