Love Poetry In Age

I'm going to keep my poems
they take up little space

and the memories please me.
one bleached from
writing on the beach
one's got a smear from a can of beer

one mended from when i went mental
ripped up and
ruined but that's all incidental.
They can wait until
adulthood
when i might find them
while looking for
something else.
I'll reread each heartfelt line

where I was when I wrote that rhyme.
That unfailing
sense of being young
words of hope and expectancy

words of pain and agony
the words that were going
to make me famous
nearly turned me into a recluse.

and amid the poetry of a contented teenager
boring
and meaningless poems and stories
there is a glare of that
rare brilliance, love.

It will be hard to pile all
my poems back
and admit 'what a waste of time.'