A Quandary for the Agea

He sat in his chair

Approaching his ninetieth year,

He sat there with thoughts

Of children he propagated

And helped to raise,

With deep regrets for a broken first

Marriage so long ago.

He sat there with blurred and vivid images

Litigating, over and again what had been,

The whirlwinds withstood

The ebb and flow of tides,

Those colorless times of mediocrity,

The basking in sun-filled days,

Charting entries in both black and red,

Enumerating his losses and gains

Ah, the biting ledger of life is a balancing

Of entries and accountability which

Brought him here to this

Approaching his ninetieth year.

He sat in his chair

With grieving memories of his departed

Second wife nestled snugly by his side,

With thoughts of a broken family

His boarding school childhood

During the Great Depression—

What will become of me?

Uncertain destinations too

Marching through the muck and mire,

The wholesale carnage of World War Two.

He sat in his chair, dizzied by the swirl

Of Creation’s Cosmic Calamity, debating

The ludicrous line between dream and reality.

The joke is on me—

Remember the myriad dead-end jobs,

Remember the moves

From city to city,

Remember the knocking 1960 Plymouth Fury,

The flat tires and profanities,

Remember the seedy motels,

The flashing neon bar signs

The dirty gin martinis,

The intoxicated nights spent alone,

Remember  pot-holed Highway 40

Remember Eisenhower

And Tricky Dick Nixon,

Remember TV's Gunsmoke

And Victory at Sea,

Who on Earth, basking in Heaven

Or ablaze in Hell,

Who of sound mind and warm heart

Will ever remember me?

He sat in his chair

Softly caressing

The sweet poodle lying motionless in his lap,

His faithful companion of so many years

Who had died just hours ago.

He sat there, approaching his ninetieth year,

A diminished flesh and bone

Headstone memorial, engraved with the cause

Of everything that every was—

The pious, the petty and the profane.

And then the inevitable perennial question arises

Which comes in time to the horizon event of black hole
Singularity inherent in the mind of all mankind,
Indeed the mystery

Of all mysteries yet to be revealed:

Is this the beginning of a new universal eternity, or is it

Simply a spontaneous spaghettification at the end?

As a young man he had a dream of pursuing a career,

Perhaps in the Science of Cosmology where a million
Years count for very little at all.

Chris Hanch 1-31-17