artwork:ralph murre
So, This is What Living Means
by Angela Consolo Mankiewicz
What a relief, to finally know
what
living means:
an
extra skate key
stashed
under a garbage can,
on
the right side of the stoop.
Years ago, I tried to ponder all
the
great questions. I read Nietzsche
and
Dostoyevsky and fell in love
with
a bulge-eyed Frenchman.
I tried to do what was expected
of
a working class kid in a state college:
think,
read, talk the big questions;
prove
your mother right.
But I was a fake.
Friends read N and D too,
and
understood them. They were impressed
by
my love for the bulge-eyed Frenchman,
my
facile quotes delivered with meaningful
pauses. They didn't know I yawned through N
and
read D because he told a good story.
Marriage and a real job distracted, just in time.
I had things to do and need not ponder
what
living means. I stopped reading N
and
fell out of love. But kept D by my
bedside.
Later on, with divorce behind me and poetry on my
mind,
I watched my cat play with a terrified lizard;
I looked at rain; I choked on hot winds scorching
my
tomato plants and began to ponder again,
but
nothing happened.
I read N again and the bulge-eyed Frenchman, but I
didn't
fall in love.
I understood better this time, but I was still
shaky
on details and settled down with D
to
forget myself.
"Why" is a good word, a solid word that
can
occupy
a lifetime. But an answer to why isn't
meaning.
"Is" is a good word too. Something of substance.
Like an extra skate key stashed under a garbage
can,
on
the right side of the stoop, just in case,
just
in time.
~
originally published on AmherstWriters.org
