SITTING IN THE DARK WAITING FOR A LIFE

SITTING IN THE DARK WAITING FOR A LIFE

Sitting in the dark waiting for a life

to catch up to him that’s never going to come.

The future already in his wake, his shadow late,

the content there, but the timing off,

a sundial at night, a waterlily in winter,

the light of that one lonely star above

the tarpaper roof of the laundramat

shining for all its worth like a thing of the past

trying to shed a light on now as if memory

were just a seance a ghost books into early.

He had his ferocious reasons for living once

but they got carried away like wallflowers

by the picture-music of his calling

and began to dance for themselves.

And it’s still the remote hope of a man

who has tasted love even if he eats his heart out

like a sacrifice to himself on the altar

of a false god somehow everybody will be nourished.

That not everything is worthless

he’s wasted his life upon going mad

like a crack in the windowless clarity

of remaining stark, raving sane. He got out

of the cosmic egg. He sees how vast the universe is

as he journeys the length of his wingspan

from one event horizon to the next.

You can tell by the firepits of spent emotions

on the moon, hic erant dracones, dragons were here

and they’ll be back like bracken in the urns of their ashes.

Eventually even the light resigns itself

to the shadows it casts like death masks

over the dreamscapes that perish in him

like eyelids that have seeded the wind

with everything there was to see in life

that took root in his starmud like fire and earth.

Like the faces of people he attempted to love

that always come to him this time of night

like the priority of a labour he failed at

or they him, though it doesn’t matter anymore.

He can smell the vague fragrance of distance

in their hair, and when they look at him now

as a few occasionally do, surprised he’s still here

as if their eyes continued to share the astounding secret

of who they were then to each other, he remembers

stray moments of intimacy when the stars first blossomed

and love was a modest entrance they made into the dark.

How soon the road wearies of those

who don’t walk it as if there were no end in sight

of how far they could go if they only realized

the going itself is as predestined as it gets.

Sad, yes, but no regrets, even if his persona

has asked him to say that as if it weren’t

just another mask he’s talking through

thousands of lightyears alone from home,

exploring his devotion to the anguish of culpable stars.

PATRICK WHITE