Coping

Now I find what strength is left
long night of long soliloquy in solitary bed
haunted dreams so long ago abandoned
spilling water damp across a tabletop
rude waking to a leg cramp and I jump onto cold floor
grope plaster wall for light switch. Clock check.
Oh joy, hours more to sleep before the morning.
Small comforts come to me as blessings
knowing the task ahead is heavy as Eventual End
that breaks the awful load but not my spirit.

No dimmed capacity to express my love
no loss of desire or the irony of its achievement.
Enjoy learning a new story, sound of a poem,
the wonder of moving through spaces.
I’ve been decades watching this movie and
I kind of want to see how it turns out. Still,
though I’ll cry at the end it will be part of the script,
the script that binds me to this noble role
this role for which I was bred and for which
I am so richly rewarded with this accolade of life.

I suppose you could say I’m coping
the shock of news scraped clean my fear and dread
always worse for vague uncertainty. Crawling
blind man’s bluff through mind corridors knowing
what lurks unknown is about to be revealed .
And if sudden revelation terrifies, if it shouts
where there were whispers, flushes with fury
like game birds from the bush before the shotgun’s blast,
I’ll find myself upon a newer, humble, barren plain.
Strange landscape of the next phase to discover.