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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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