Had I known what I knew then,<\/p>\n
I would have done it all the same,<\/p>\n
hit the roof, flown the coop, kicked the bucket,<\/p>\n
but not without a fight, without a last stand.<\/p>\n
You don’t finish last if you quit the race.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Starting is the hardest part, when<\/p>\n
your feet won’t go and your heart beats fast.<\/p>\n
Had I known what I knew then,<\/p>\n
I would have done it all the same.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, I’d have taken it slower.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
When the going gets tough, then you soften<\/p>\n
the pace to a crawl, belly down, back to the wall.<\/p>\n
They can only keep your head under water so long.<\/p>\n
Still, had I known what I knew then,<\/p>\n
I would have done it all the same.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Regrets never pinned me like a voodoo doll,<\/p>\n
and wishes fall into the well like a dull thud<\/p>\n
in a distant hollow: what I know now, what I knew then,<\/p>\n
It’s all the same, what I do now, will never be again,<\/p>\n
Yet, it never mattered to any of us anyhow.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A drum beats blindly, pulse-passes on to the next one in line,<\/p>\n
and the baton passes from your hands to mine and mine to theirs.<\/p>\n
I give them nothing more; they earn nothing less.<\/p>\n
Time trims the sun’s beams shorter, molds the sky round,<\/p>\n
and I if I ever knew it then, I know I know it now the same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Had I known what I knew then, I would have done it all the same, hit the roof, flown the coop, kicked the bucket, but not without a fight, without a last stand. You don’t finish last if you quit the race. Starting is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-half-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89259"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89562,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89259\/revisions\/89562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}