I HESITATED
By Mark Prebilic
I hesitated.
Not out of spite
Not out of anger
Not out of unhappiness
My will lacked fervor.
Now I’m staring back
Glaring at the opportunity missed
Disgust overtaking rational thought.
The past echoes of our future
Have been muffled by the crashing waves.
Where once stood a mighty redwood
Now sits a mountain nymph
Preparing for its exit.
If we approach it sanguinely
Apologetically
Invitingly
Will it then hesitate?
Will our attempts to cajole it,
to pamper it,
to entice it,
prove fruitful?
Or will it,
with suspicions swelling,
with solitude beckoning,
with survival imploring,
Take the risk of solitude as the harbinger of peace.
Take the offered promise of wholeness
through a dissection of the soul;
A sated appetite
fed only by the one hand.
I’ve sat along the creek’s edge.
Watched the water’s rising;
Reacted not.
Hesitated.
And now those waters rush over me
Inundate the ground beneath me
Uproot the sycamores that once danced before the bane.
Will I get to higher ground?
Will I survive the tempest?
Will I escape this self-inflicted certitude?
I’ve peered into the face of the storm
Been tossed by its fierceness
Been terrified by its ferocity
And yet awed by its single-mindedness.
How did I get to this station?
How did I miss the forecast?
How was I unknowingly overtaken?
Perhaps the answers won’t come easily
or ever
Perhaps the mystery that we investigate
Will remain unsolved
And carry us from this life
To the next.
SHHH…
Last time we talked
I shivered.
Swishing shoals of shimmering sand awash in the tide.
Quieted I was by the sound.
Ne’er ending, rather undulating.
I drifted then,
aimlessly seeking a shore;
ceasing short.
Battered back before the bane -
Bandied and banished.
Sunlight swoons in the sepulcher;
Then vanishes.
About the Author:
Mark Prebilic is a database expert by trade with a penchant for creativity on the side. He writes both poetry and fiction. He is also a university-trained musician. Mark lives in Reston, Virginia. He has three grown children in addition to three still-growing grandchildren.
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