Why Must I Wait
by Carl Santoro
(Sad music honors this moment. A lone horn.
A pessimistic old person reflects on the unfairness of putting up with loss.)
Yes, a lone horn
ushers my mind as though
into a wooden boat,
launching onto restless waters.
The inside filling with my
morbid thoughts.
Faces and voices of loved ones,
although dead, out there beckoning me
to follow their boats.
But again, as always, instead-
I live, I breath, I seem to wait.
The daily continuous stream of new
deaths, place me as the new pawn, forward,
closer to the inevitable.
The job of life is now
left to me.
I must suck the most out of it.
I must make up the loss others had not
time to take of their full opportunities.
A year comes. A loved one goes.
The job of a
waiting-for-death life-
is left to me. The honor I am bestowed.
I struggle with a maddening concept,
the ever elusive, the ever unruly thing called-
joy.
How to make it work.
I WILL play with it.
I WILL bend it.
Use it every day. MAKE it work.
To keep this, my, life sane.
The more I immerse in it,
keep busy in it,
believe in it
the less I have to wait.
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I was melancholy when I started reading this...I'm still a tad blue, but NOW I sense joy almost within my grasp! *
Wait-less/weightless. I like the elusive feeling of joy here and the diligence the narrator has in not giving up the search for it. "The job of life is now....a maddening concept."
I think I read this earlier but it seems different, has it been edited since? I like it much better now, perhaps its one of those occasions where frame of mind dictates effect. "the more I immerse in it, the less I have to wait".
Sam, you are correct! I took out the word "toy" and substituted it with "thing"(re: I struggle with a maddening concept,the ever elusive, the ever unruly (TOY) called-
joy.
I feared it was misleading; maybe take the reader towards an unintended sexual direction. You are very observant. Thank you for reading and commenting.