What Is It? (A Love Song)
by Charity Carlson Hirst
in humble homage to T.S. Eliot’s masterpiece The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock – my favorite poem
Walking through deserted streets
on restless nights, my thoughts repeat
like frantic hornets trapped inside a wall.
Pale moon and stars watch me below.
The cosmic glow
of astral bodies that twinkle and shine
in infinite space, it burns my mind
and leads me to more overwhelming questions.
So how do I begin?
For indeed there is no time
to watch the evening sunsets as I walk on every beach,
sipping whiskey out of teacups with old friends and new I’ll meet.
Or lazy Sunday mornings, books in bed, maybe a nap,
dog curled up at my feet, kitten purring on my lap.
There is no time, not enough time for cozy family afternoons,
silly games and inside jokes, or cookie dough on coffee spoons.
Oh, the places I could go!
All the beauty yet to appreciate!
No time for the laughs and tears and days and years
I yearn to pile on my plate.
Just like the stars, I self-consume
nuclear fusion, gone too soon
to know the unborn constellations a supernova can create.
In short, I am afraid.
As I am pinned on how to be,
paralyzed with moribundity,
the eternal stagehand steadily pulls the rope.
My scenes must have some meaning
the acts are fleeting while I’m keening
but it doesn’t slow the velvet curtain drawing to a close.
There is no time left to wonder, ‘Do I dare?’
Too late to turn back and descend the stair,
no rehearsing or reversing how a vapor leaves the air.
It’s time to disturb the universe.
Force my questions to a crisis, roll eternity into a ball –
“How do I dare keep going with the ache of never knowing?
Will it be worth it? What even IS it?
Am I a fool to want it all?”
Then I will come to pay a visit.
Let us go now, you and me,
swimming with mermaids in the briny blue sea,
savor the summer with a plump, juicy peach,
weave greenish brown seaweed into crowns, each to each.
Wearing flannel pants, gray hairs secured with a pin,
I’ll walk earthy orchards, apples crisp in the trees,
cyclones of ocher leaves stirred by a breeze,
then bake autumn pies in my cinnamon kitchen.
It will have been worthwhile after all
to hear the silent snowflakes falling
fur-lined slippers softly calling
treasured traditions and recipes
spanning generations of memories
singing songs we know by heart
that I learned when I was small.
And when winter ice melts, let’s dance in the rain,
splashing mud from spring puddles with the birds home again,
roll down verdant hills where yellow daffodils mound,
face turned toward the light, roots deep in the ground.
I have trembled low beneath the cryptic cosmos
and dreamed of floating over the billowed clouds.
As I wander, I will ponder and seek to revel in the wonder of
shooting stars that catch fire as they drown.