Here's a new poem I've just completed.  I need your responses to it please.  Two words of explanation: a planxty is an Irish song of memorial lamentation and I usually sign my poems with the words "Sung to the tune of".  Here's the poem:

"Planxty Wistful" by J. Charles Cripps

Oh, those sad, sad words, "If only I had"

We see so clearly what could have been,

What might have made a difference when...

What prompted us to make that choice?

That led on then to what has been,

To what our longing hearts now see as sin?

Neglect, indifference, insensitive withdrawal

Our haughty refusal way back then,

Followed by the pain we caused at end.

We sit bereft, the quiet tears we do not show

But our hearts, now full, doth know

Begin to flow, and break with shaking sobs.

Thus lamentation and our painful grief

Write lines of aging without relief into our face

And condemn us to that bent and quavering race.

"If only I had, if only I had"...

Things were so good when I was a lad

But now the quiet rains, the leaves, the snow doth fall

And in this final winter of our discontent

Silent, we are wasted, spent...

Vague, regretful, longing, wistful to the last.

Sung to no tune at all.

You have a very nice and refreshing style about your writing.  I think the fact that so many people that have really lived can relate to that in one way or another makes it all the more poignant.  As well, you have captured a large target audience with this particular piece because of that.  I've certainly been there before.  Well done.

Timeless.

If only I had...

I've found that for me there is hope and peace in grief and regret as they are expressions of some of the forms of love. A poignant poem, reflecting the desperate realization that time cannot be reversed...

That is a very meaningful idea, that grief and regret are expressions of love.  If we didn't love, we wouldn't care.  Very thought provoking.  Thanks.

Glad to contribute...and thanks for sharing your poetry.