Still Life With Fish
The people on the bus go up and down…
Those imagined myriad first choices:
astronaut, fireman, cowboy, hero.
A child’s view of infinite possibility.
So many corners to turn, paths to take.
The smiling illusions of Free Will.
And then arrives the Great Settling.
The dawning middle age of mediocrity.
A turnpike with only one terminal exit.
An awful Interstate leading to nowhere.
An exercise in the only ordinary.
The dominoes that tumble as they must.
A long swim through a drying swamp.
Apprehension and unhappiness.
Hoarded secret humiliations.
The unbeautiful bodies creaking.
A clamorous anticipation of pain.
Mostly misunderstood mysteries.
An emptiness that drives everything.
Not one life chosen from many offered,
but one life offered from none chosen.
A random smattering of lonely events.
Until fixed in its finally failed tableau,
a fish trapped in a dying mud puddle
with with sad, shrunken boundaries,
with nowhere left to swim at all.
