AN UNCERTAIN WEATHER

 

 

AN UNCERTAIN WEATHER

It’s 36C outside, let’s take that deferred swim at the resort’s pool.” She said. “Yup,” he said. But the water was still cold from the cold spell in Nevada. He cursed.

 “We have known them all already,
known them all”. Thus, we measure lives,
abandoned hopes, laments, even sighs.

We have heard them all already,
the prayers that remain unanswered
behind bolted doors, darkened rooms.

This anguish over being here and not
here is all too familiar, but like innocent
children, we still look toward times

when we eagerly open holiday boxes
and find surprises no longer there,
but manage to smile anyway, bottle up

a “No thank you,” and move on to other
boxes, only to find feigned familiar
joy that those are still the wanted toys.

Like a dip in the pool on a beastly hot day,

that turns out like a party-pooper’s retreat
from a douse of frozen water in a cold pool.

Thus ends a holiday in a pretend paradise,

in this defiant desert of dystopian dreams:
Not with a sigh of bliss, but with a shiver.

Like uncertain weather marked in the sky,
we move on, unchartered, with the flux,
like all things plotted must begin then end.

—Albert B. Casuga

04-09-14, Las Vegas, at the Elara