The Next Hard Thing

It feels too easy, what’s the catch?

Did I reach the end and that was that?

Or am I holding out for the next hard thing

Invisible and brooding

To cut and tie my own new growth

Just as it was rooting

Will my plastic skeleton molt away

At the first warm glow of Spring

then windswept by the gales of March

move on to other things

Or will it cling, a stubborn husk

To calcify and harden

As I sit in wait, immobilized

For another season’s parting

Will I exhale and dare to live as if it never happened

Or clench my fists and gnash my teeth

To only live in passing

Can I shrug off pain and poison

And wash away my scars

And dream about tomorrow

finding light from distant stars

Will I grow to meet all seasons

And rise with swelling tides

And when I defy the crashing waves

Will the siren undertow be my demise

Will a raised guard be the burden

That drags me to the ocean floor

And if I turn to face it

Will I learn less or more?

If I wash my hands of all of this

What do I still know?

That God was kind or fate was quick

To rob death of his blow?

Was the triumph in your spirit or a flip of someone’s coin

And if I can’t retain it, was it ever really mine?