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The book The House of the World has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and is now available on Amazon.

The Play Must Go On

The play has begun.
Is this the first act
or the last act?
Am I in the middle,
or leaving the stage?
The plot has been thin.
Is my life a rehearsal?
Has the cast been chosen?
Are the tryouts over?
Does creation know how to write
a play that means anything at all?
There are bits of the script
that confuse me.
Where the dialogue hangs in the action,
with no where to go.
No soliloquy to explain the plot
with the light in my eyes.

Where is the girl?
The decoration for bravery?
The shadows of catastrophe
where I enter noble and wise.
Or is it a pedestrian walk?
A street here,
a good-by there.
A song that repeats
again and again,
until I die in the sand
surrounded by emptiness.
In the end,
nothing making sense
except love,
and my hand on a woman’s hand,
heartache, and salt
from her tears on mine.

Published inIndex of all Poems