Parallel Paths
Kevin Clark
Today you're lucky, in love with your wife
for the first time in weeks, both of you
out for a walk in the overgrown park.
No need to hold hands
like that sadly animate couple
you can see through a clearing
on a parallel path.
She lets
go and turns from him. You notice
how in their weather misery hangs
faintly familiar in the cold shadows.
As if having recently unlearned
the habit of empathy, the sky
over their forest seems to laugh
at whatever they say, a woman
turning from a man, their dog
flexed on a heap of duff
pretending to study the sparrows.
Now the woman feigns confidence,
stepping gracefully
away. Two lives severed
irrevocably.
Such a capricious drug,
the present. Look for instance
at this woman's immediate future.
Like yourself once, she will forget
the names of old haunts, her voice
a clever imposter, someone else
filling her mouth, not with words,
but vocables intending her own worth.
Or right now: how all of these thoughts
have occurred to you in a flash.
When you look up, your wife's vanished.
But really she's there, of course,
off the path, among the ancient
waist-high grasses, holding out to you
a single mutable wildflower
burning in its own ochre light.
From here to that flower exist
no guarantees. Best to get on with it.
Life turns on a freaking dime. It's not personal. It just is. You think you'll have tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow to figure things out, but there's no guarantee.
Eat, drink, and be merry, really makes sense. So does, live for today, get on with it, oh bloodee! oh blooday!, fiddle dee dee, tomorrow is another day. Okay, then! time to just get on with it. Life is random, the meek don't inherit a damn thing, playing it safe in love is just stupid, life is not suffering, it's beautiful, and it's so short, so what are we doing not living the life we really, really, really want? And why are we eating so much fiber and nuts and berries, instead of ice cream and creamy pastas, and loads of dark chocolate, when it really doesn't matter in the end anyway, huh!
Free spirits, hedonists, head to the nearest spa, Baskin Robbins, whatever,and wherever delights you. It's time to get our groove back on.
No comments:
Post a Comment