Thoughts Later in Life…

         –by Jim Nolan

What has it all been about?

Is that the wrong question?

If it’s not over, is the meaning still up ahead?

Is ‘meaning’ what I should be looking for?

Do I just fill the time?

With things, or…?

Is that not the point?

Or is there a ‘point’?

I’m kind of lost here

Or maybe I’m not—

Maybe there is no ‘lost’

This is the same thing I wondered

when I was fifteen–

Maybe one circles back?

Maybe the answers get better?

Or the questions deeper?

It’s terribly windy out tonight—

Why am I in the high desert?

When all I ever wanted was the sea?

Nicanor Parra wrote:

“Thinking one thing, I say another.”

I get that now.

At some point, perhaps,

one just wants to feel comforted.

There IS a loneliness no Other can calm—

Still, you want to know that,

somehow,

it is going to be all right.

That doesn’t seem like much to ask.

Maybe it is?

I don’t know…

Depends on what this has all been about…

I don’t really know.

It’s ok that I don’t really know.

about the moderator