Fear

Wednesday
Chairbound and slumping,

too frightened to walk

my morning walk

to the chalk yellow hill

where the chickens

stupid in their frenzies

scamper, where in winter

they roost in wire and wood

with a light that glows

all day and night,
prone beneath
the immanent weight

of an unanchored strife,

I called in sick to life.

This had happened to me

at no other age:

with perplexing frequency

to discover that at 44

vast numbers peak

or die -- Monday a basketball

player dropped up north,

all seven feet of him dead,

Tuesday a poet wrote an ode,

Wednesday found a truth.

Some waited and the light came,

some excavated with care and toil,

some begged the fire or the light of God,

some took the darkness as handout.

This was me at 44:

finally confronting in adequacy

ineptitude, not what others had seen

but worse, in between,

neither dead nor peaking,

nearing, fearing the answer

to will it be light,

fire, or darkness,

and what is the darkness’ cost,

or the price of light.

But the answer

never came nearer,

or I was out of hearing,

distracted by bad dreams

or a wild sling

of this unbound strife,

that flings me

from chair to fear

of the scamper

and the frenzy

and the light and now,

not peaking,

hearing fading,

suspended in unbound

strife, I keep alert

as the days lengthen,

as the repetitious heat

and arid glow of summer

slowly burn the chickens.
                   - J. O'Brien