and such a hypothetical..I..I suppose I would opt to fix things, make the other choices, get something in the way of accidents, decide to have stayed in Paris and lived there...endless. But as Eliot put it

'Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now.'

And within that now are magic moments and regrets.

..

I was living in Paris is the years following Piaf's death and her influence on me and all France was huge. I loved that song, written by Charles Dumont. Recently I heard the song used in a tv commercial and got me thinking how disingenuous it is. To live without any regret is almost psychotic, like an assassin or hitman. I used the title because it was what prompted the poem, to get everyone who claims to embrace it as truth are not being truthful with themselves. It may make you feel good while singing along, but, like the song writer himself, we all have to admit to regret. And this is not a bad thing. Denying regret is. The subject of the song seems more "blasphemous". It does not in any way diminish my reverence for Piaf...just a come to jesus about the message of the song. It's so easy to say, and feels good to say it, but it is not a truth any compassionate person should embrace. For now I'm not sure how to introduce the theme of the poem without referencing it , but i'm open to suggestion.

The website is gone, but I can cut and paste this in....why cap? I agree with this:

•to remind myself that I am writing a poem;
•to underscore to myself the integrity of the line, which is after all what distinguishes poetry from all other literary genres;
•to connect myself to history for a very brief moment before I go on to say what I myself have to say now;
•to give each line--however subtle--its own authority;
•to suggest that, although I may be telling a story, it is not a regular story, and certainly not prose;
•to make my enjambment have to work honestly, and to give my end-stopped lines greater Moment;
•to build up thoughtful pacing in a poem, suggesting or invoking a little more strongly all the reasons we break lines to begin with--breath, heartbeat, dramatic intention;
•to recognize this use of the shift key as a self-conscious act, which raises the stakes for everyone and everything--the poem, the poet, and the reader;
•to do more work in this small moment, knowing that work makes more things happen;
•to rhyme--that is, to use this recurring, predictable device of capitalization in the ways that poems have often used many devices, such as rhyme, to give structure and sensibility to the poem; knowing that I'm going to capitalize the first word in each line gives all my poems at least some rudimentary structure;
•to understand that a poem cannot be contained--rather, it launches outward and away from what we know; that is, capitalizing the first letter of a line can be predicted and controlled ahead of time, but that's all that can be controlled, so that the poem, each line of the way, is launched, and this launching, this kicking away from the shore of the left margin is always an act of power, imagination, and adventure.

So for now I am on the Cap team. It is a small point, but I am in the majority. As you are somewhat a traditionist I'm surprised you are not also. I have no problem with others who do not, nor those that avoid punctuation, one of the few tools we have...but after all is said, it's about how the poem SOUNDS.