Double Life by Don Blanding

My friend Clark sent me this poem recently. 

It was a timely delivery. My Dad and I have been discussing this very thing: the desire to live multiple lives simultaneously, our deep wish to be in more than one place at a time, the bittersweet frustration of the knowledge that we can do anything we want with this one, beautiful life, but not everything we want. Choices must be made.

And then… I found a paperback copy of Vagabond’s House laying on the end table at my friend Powell’s house, in Kailua, last week. I thumbed through the pages, ran my fingers over the ink drawing on the cover, and savoured the moment. It seemed a serendipity to receive the gift of the poem and find a copy of the book within days of landing back in North America, after 19 months away. Of course it’s just a swing through for a few months, but re-entry and time at home is always a period of rooting down in my soul and reflecting on the layers of life. Blanding’s poetry echoes so many of the conflicts that I find within myself. I thought that today I might share one with you, and perhaps you will find yourself in it, as I did:

Double Life

by Don Blanding

How very simple life would be
If only there were two of me
A Restless Me to drift and roam
A Quiet Me to stay at home.
A Searching One to find his fill
Of varied skies and newfound thrill
While sane and homely things are done
By the domestic Other One.

And that’s just where the trouble lies;
There is a Restless Me that cries
For chancy risks and changing scene,
For arctic blue and tropic green,
For deserts with their mystic spell,
For lusty fun and raising Hell,

But shackled to that Restless Me
My Other Self rebelliously
Resists the frantic urge to move.
It seeks the old familiar groove
That habits make. It finds content
With hearth and home — dear prisonment,
With candlelight and well-loved books
And treasured loot in dusty nooks,

With puttering and garden things
And dreaming while a cricket sings
And all the while the Restless One
Insists on more exciting fun,
It wants to go with every tide,
No matter where…just for the ride.
Like yowling cats the two selves brawl
Until I have no peace at all.

One eye turns to the forward track,
The other eye looks sadly back.
I’m getting wall-eyed from the strain,
(It’s tough to have an idle brain)
But One says “Stay” and One says “Go”
And One says “Yes,” and One says “No,”
And One Self wants a home and wife
And One Self craves the drifter’s life.

The Restless Fellow always wins
I wish my folks had made me twins.