At that awkward age now between birth and death

My first of this week's external poems is Here I Am by Roger McGough on page 1046 of the Norton.

In this poem, the speaker voices all of his regrets of things that he has not done in his life. They are not anything huge, like scaling Mt. Everest or learning to fly a plane, but rather silly, spontaneous things that he presumably held himself back from for fear or nervousness. He seems to mostly regret not living in the moment.

The poem's shape is not blaringly obvious, but it does resemble the silhouette of a woman. This provocative image represents the romanticism and adventurous sense of adventure of youth, which this man feels, to an extent, he missed out on.