blocks and scattering

 

Anxiety

no matter how well things are going at the time,

I fear what can come next:

the price that must be paid

for how much I feel I am given,

the wearing out of what has been working

until . . .

my mind still can live in the present,

yet my fears live in the future

(and even in the past as to what might have been),

in the future a bill will come due,

for me or maybe for those close to me,

the blocks carefully stacked on top of each other

will inexplicably crash, 

or just as bad,

be explicable in how body, mind, event,

revert to chaos, entropy,

to a scattering across the floor,

even a battle won seems temporary now,

which will be my last?

my colonoscopy was fine,

but the actuarial tables tell the doctor

to not plan on another one for me,

my aerobic walks, now, 

more of endurance than joy,

my patience with colleagues slipping,

as "tomorrow" trumps today,

I fear a willingness to procrastinate, to dither,

to jump to the current newness

to imagine that the way forward

has only just been revealed,

I increasingly feel the world deserves a sense of foreboding,

each day, now, reminds me 

of waiting for the draft lottery for Vietnam

while I was finishing college,

I'm still feeling myself in the dining hall,

listening to the oracle revealing my future,

my future dependent upon the whim of dice

I cannot even see, certainly not control,

dice that will tell me whether the way forward

can still be a future I can grasp at with hope.

by Henry H. Walker

July 10, '23