Regret

Hour after midnight, alert,
a nostalgia, a strange hurt,
the weight of something worth
a while descended on my heart,
warm as the dessert I baked that night,
soft as the skin of my shirt,
insidiously daft.
I might
remember the event as a smarting wound,
I remember the tart repartee.
Yet I yearn still, years on,
for the diverged road in the yellow wood,
the diverted stream,
the unhurt me,
silly but certain,
assertive but inert,
(a self now in dearth),
endeavouring on a coveted path,
when I somehow
fell behind.
I could not endure.
Somehow, I ended up on this night,
travelling, crablike, laterally;
overtly restarting,
but covertly charting
a circle back to my old haunt,
cutting a large swath as I go in the dirt,
exerting myself for the regard
of an age now long past.