string bean

i was secretly plotting my own suicide
when fate intervened, and i got
sent to a mental hospital for 3 months.
i emerged from the mental hospital
only half-crazy. no longer suicidal,
but kinda half wild, half terrified,
my thoughts of an
undefined and
gauzily amorphous
nature. i was just 18.
now,
i'm 63, long ago met
the man i love, and have been
living with him
for over 30 years.
we're good together.
i feel lucky.
now, when
i think back about
a lot of things in my life,
i feel kinda nostalgic
mellow, and
puzzled, actually,
by the apparent happenstance of
it all. who knew things would
turn out okay?
i'm looking out the window at
this very moment. it's october.
autumn leaves in all those
pretty autumn colors.
yep,
i'm almost 64 now,
and
just kinda
amazed.

--Carl Miller Daniels (This poem "string bean" is the title poem to my book String Bean.  The book String Bean was published by BareBackPress in 2018. The poem first appeared in Chiron Review, Issue #104, Summer 2016.)