The Sand Hill Review http://www.sandhillreview.org 2004

Try

Try as you might you don’t try too hard. For if the future can be forestalled

pushed back, resisted by feigning indifference then so be it. Then the world

is only this glass of water in the hand or a walk by the lake. Then only

this song on the radio, something sweet and reminiscent of cherries, nothing

threatening like judgment in its many, many forms, test after test after test.

Each day you try a little harder to pretend the future isn’t moving towards you,

first glacially slow and then liquefying, from ice to slush to river to flash flood,

with no rock to scamper on, no higher ground to escape the torrent. Maybe this

is what the fisherman feels too, when he is at sea, as if the Maker doesn’t have

his number, no not yet. Then there is only this radius of blue, this sky, wave

patterns seen once and never seen again. At times like that the mortgage must

seem simply an idea, the wife and kids ideas also; flimsy, a picture to entertain,

like a piece of sea glass he turns over and glances at in the light, or a hologram,

first their faces, waving good-bye on shore, then flipped, everyone seated

around the table, safe, unharmed, with no hint of menace, no action

that requires a reaction, nothing that needs his attention, that presses in.

If you trick the mind, take the whole damn thing down a notch, then you

won’t be caught but what shall you do when you waver, with no captain to call,

when temptation leads you to fear each next day, the drumbeat roll, pressure

on the temple, on the heart. Some preacher once said, “set you sights to fail

in this world and triumph in the next” but the bumper sticker on the car

in front of you reads: “Second place? First loser.”

Toni Mirosevich