Slow Learner's Autobiography Poem by Saiom Shriver

At 17 this writer had sponged
up my father's conservative politics
and wrote a paper about
bombing an Asian country.
ate the flesh of animals,
mowed in ignorance the butterflies
small reptiles and plants in my
family garden,
was ignorant about how
to deal with a married man's
advances without hurting
his feelings.

At age 32 I still thought it
alright to draft teens
into my animal rights phalanx,
feeling the cause more important
than their individual desires.

At age 38 I was still killing trees
and their resident fledgling birds
and squirrels... by sending press
releases to newspapers, and was
unable to delegate
mail opening and other tasks.

Life is a river. Our souls each day
shed the past and take on the new.
I try to remember the Course In Miracles
sentence: 'guilt is a sure sign your
thinking is unnatural'.