So Now?

from Transit magazine, 1994

The 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!