He is now deliciously

irrelevant.
He ponders great issues
related to the breeding of
fruit trees.
He is in crisis consultation
about that annoying lawn vine.
He is thinking outside the box
about the problem of getting
all 10 blocks piled up
before she knocks them down.
And he is going to write that
epic work
no one will read
that will explain
The Mystery
once and for all.
Ah, the poor fools.
What they will be missing
out on.

The unremarkable book asserted

that indeed it had all been done
in 144 ferociously action-packed,
miraculous hours
a few thousand fleeting years ago
in the not-so-ancient past.
It ridiculed the notion that
the great apes and we had shared
that vine-covered house
down the street
a long time ago.
There was nothing I hadn't seen
and laughed at
a thousand times before.
But then it said
that God would someday reverse
all suffering,
and make everything just as if
no scourge, no fire, no rack, no rape
had ever been experienced.
I closed the book in horror,
not only because I suddenly
hated whatever fool
had actually written that,
but because my resistance
to seductive madness
was low that day.

It can only be borne

(if it's to be borne at all)
by refusing to see
or recognize
most of it.
It can only be borne
by living in a space
so tight
and sweetly-spirited
in its gentle obliviousness
that the rest of it
just rolls off of you
like a wave to which
you have
your back turned.
The mirage of right now
and the gameshow
of right here
help keep the idiot cruelty
hidden from our
wishful field of vision
and let us
believe that the knife edge
cannot find those
who refuse to acknowledge
its
existence.

Wasn't everything supposed to be

taken care of by now?
Weren't we supposed to be drinking in
the earthrise from our homes on the
Mare Imbrium and bidding
tearful farewells to neighbors
headed for a now human-friendly
Red Planet?
Wasn't the savagery of the age-old
battle for control of
pieces of the earth's crust
supposed to be the stuff of a now
discarded barbarian epoch?
Weren't the ravages of disease and
senescence supposed to be as archaic
and incomprehensible
as Stonehenge?
And weren't all the infinitely
false caricatures of others
embraced by
of our pathetic ancestors,
manifested and elaborated in
blood-soaked detail over
countless centuries,
supposed to be receding into
a thankfully remote past,
as we basked in the glow
of Universal Brotherhood?
My God, what sort of idiotic,
delusional
children
were we?

I look down an ill-defined road,

its contours and extent
obscured by shifting patterns
of light, shade, and chance.
Its downward slope has not
escaped my practiced eye,
and I tread it warily.
I know that as I walk forward
my steps will become more labored,
my body will ignore my wishes more
and more,
that the irreversible law
of return to that
from which I emerged
will assert itself
without mercy.
And yet as I surrender the last
reflections of what I was in the
high summer of life,
my hope is
that I will enter into my true adulthood,
that I will know simple gratitude
more fully than I ever have,
that I will accept the losses
which now must come with something
resemblant of grace,
that I will treasure laughter and
the singing of the trees
with a fervor that belies my age,
that I will finally be able to
forgive and be forgiven,
and that I will know that even
though I never figured out what
all this was,
I never gave up trying to scale
the infinite cliffside.
And if I can have one last request,
(and isn't a condemned man entitled
to at least one?)
it's that when they find me,
I'll have a book
on my lap.

They spoke in hushed tones,

lest they violate the solemnity
of the timeless ceremony.
They watched in awe as the dancers
hopped around the striped pole
while slinging
hog entrails at each other.
The ritual toe wrestling contest
held them entranced.
The presentation of the
initiate in the deeply traditional
outfit of
clown shoes,
ballerina dress, and
a goat's head mask
elicited short, excited breaths
from both of them.
And the pinnacle of the service,
the ritual immersion of the initiate
in a vat of
honey and chicken feathers
(to symbolize his newfound
right to borrow fishing gear
from the neighbors)
was even more moving than their
professor had promised.
There were tears in their eyes
as they chanted "Great googlie mooglie!"
with the others,
and prepared to go to the
post-ceremonial feast,
the smell of the Ritz crackers
and assorted Jello molds
practically making them swoon
in anticipation.

They keep looking for him

to return with a shout
and an airborne embrace
for those who have held
true through all the
Gethsemanes of doubt
and fear that have rippled
through their kind
for so many expectant
centuries.
But I'm betting
his return won't be
in a blaze of triumphant
glory that overwhelms
us with the blinding light
of the earth-melting divine.
If it comes at all,
it will come as a quiet
arm around the heart,
one by one,
and the realization that
what matters
isn't whether the clouds part
and the angels sing
and the seals open,
but whether we
see a six year old
with
The Thousand Yard Stare
on his face
and say,
"Enough."