On a day of constantly turning outward, a look within: "How to Save Yourself"

The author as cowboy: April 1951, Lancaster, Pa.

How to Save Yourself

I keep meeting myself as a boy.

He’s doing and saying everything I remember him doing.

I think this is all he is now: what I remember.

But I’m wrong: there is something else.

At the end of each appearance, clumsy

Or adept depending on the event, he has started

To add something in a newer tone.

“Save me,” he says in a whisper.

He is not following the rules of memory.

But he is me, so I have a stake in his demand.

“How can I help?” I ask helplessly.

“Understand.” A whisper with a shout’s resonance.

I take it as a cue to offer retrospective advice.

Circumspection and foresight are what I recommend.

“Circumspection? Foresight? I’m five years old!”

Then: “I’m twelve years old.”  Then: “I’m seventeen years old.”

I’m at a loss. “Just understand,” he says.

I stop talking. I watch him talk and act some more,

Following the scripts of my memory to a T.

It can be painful. Finally I must speak to him.

“And now?” I ask hopefully. “And now?”

He begins to seem less trapped, freer within himself.

I am standing under him: I’ve attained the etymological sublime.

“It’s working!” he says in the voice of someone

 I can begin to love. It’s working.