So Now?
from Transit magazine, 1994
So Now? - meaning Summary
Awaiting Life or Death
The poem captures a quiet, domestic moment of stasis and emotional numbness. The speaker observes ordinary household details while feeling ill and caught between waiting to live and waiting to die. Small gestures of wanting courage and the indifferent movement of a tree underline isolation. The piece ends with a rueful recollection of youth, contrasting past vitality with present passivity and underscoring solitary facing of time.
Read Complete AnalysesThe words have come and gone, I sit ill. The phone rings, the cats sleep. Linda vacuums. I am waiting to live, waiting to die. I wish I could ring in some bravery. It's a lousy fix but the tree outside doesn't know: I watch it moving with the wind in the late afternoon sun. There's nothing to declare here, just a waiting. Each faces it alone. Oh, I was once young, Oh, I was once unbelievably young!
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