A Wonderful Future Beckoned and Winked

(After The Bell Jar)

The endless figs were mocking me,

The way they said buckle in.

Here it comes. We’re looking,

we’re all looking, to the idle future

and then here it is in front of us.

The year is a glowing bulb until

it’s december again and all the figs

are gone. Then we are jaded things made

to believe we can do better and yet

The world is a dark place. I know

a half-blind singer who has made his own

language, he calls it Hopelandic.

Picking figs is pulling teeth.

Each falling, forever falling, I have seen

the way a person can sit in the center

Of their life and grin. It doesn’t have to be

absolute or bliss. You just have to be there for it.

My life, a ripe fig wilting quickly.

Everything is here and I cannot

Tell which I will pick. The way they said

we’ve arrivedand alsothere is no backwards.