The Years Allotted

In the grand scheme of things

you were in the bardo again — not sure how you got there, but that is life

as the saying goes, our meticulous gods know how many hairs are numbered on our heads like a team of accountants

surely they know how many hours we live, the minute we die, the how and the why

but this bardo was a limbo, a kind of dark birth canal, a coal mine from Dante’s Hell, or was it your ash gray cubicle at the office? was it the dark back corner of the grocery store where they keep the dog food?

all you knew was that this was a foggy in-between-state, something between sleep and waking, a dazed, post-surgical state — morphine clouds possibly passing overhead

how was it you were working three jobs, like a sleepwalker playing the piano?

you tutored tots the building blocks of math and logic, conducted social research, transformed complaints into disarming gratitude like a magician

and at night you scribbled ditties like this piece, rolling the die for a shot at a small boost

all this while only half-awake, half-asleep, bardo-enclosed

blue, forty, thrifty, dodgy —

it made you ask yourself, was death merely a midlife crisis?

was midlife a dress-rehearsal for the ghostly bardo?

your parents back home tell you that you are depressed

and yet, as you drift

through this dubious life like fog off a harbor, you wink in response —

but Mom, I don’t think I’ve ever felt lighter

© Carlo Zeno 2023

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