Rehearsing How to Live

In lively and entertaining prose and verse Max Roytenberg offers his perspective on life and its events in Rehearsing How to Live: Reaching Out to Life. He draws conclusions on living and loving, the order of our priorities, parents and children, wives and families, life and death, and aging and dying. He discusses the rapid pace of the changing society around us, along with the challenges of technology and changing demographics. He asks questions and shares his answers-how have we dealt with these elements of life, what have we done right, what have we done wrong, what might we have done, and what might we yet do?

Roytenberg believes that life is a rehearsal every day for how we may face our tomorrows better prepared. These poems have been written over a period of more than fifty years and focus on the benefits of hindsight, second guessing, and maybe a few lies about what really happened.

Can We See?

Skitter-scatter, wind-swept droplets beat staccato

rhythms on our glassy apertures

shattering into filigree the apparitions that

dance so visibly in the light of rainless day.

Looking back at our histories, our views clouded

by the torrents of emotion, silvering shadows

gilding the realities, we shield the constructs

that protect our private images of the past.

Do we ever truly see our histories clearly in the light?