Saturday book feature — Then Gone — Ed Hack

This Human Life

You look, you’ll find it all. Results of loss,
of victories, of halfway to a place
you cannot name, of lines you stumbled cross
and wake up now to fate you have to face.
I’ve never been an easy man. It all
was just so strange to me, this human life,
the point of it, when I felt I could fall
right through. A beating pulse means one survives.
I came to love when I was lost and found
in it the joys and troubles of the heart.
The welcome of a smile that’s true. The sound
of her voice in another room, the part
where things go wrong because no one’s a saint
and trying often sounds like a complaint.

by Ed Hack, from Then Gone (2022, Full Court Press)

buy link: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/then-gone-ed-hack/1142710012