sunday poem

Sisyphus

“To decide whether life is worth living is the fundamental question of philosophy”

-Albert Camus

Camus knew how to question

The nagging vexations.

He never found an answer.

The best he could do was a method;

Pushing massive boulders

Up and down a steep hill

Day after day until the end.

Sweating, straining under the weight,

Somehow still smiling,

Grinning at the absurdity of his fate.

You can close your eyes

and imagine him happy.

Or peak a bit when no one is looking
And wish the boulder would just stay put

I too embrace the absurd:

Another night on call

Every other weekend

Days and times blurred.

Another gangrenous gallbladder

Busted up appendix

Perforated bowel

Air under the diaphragm

Air tracking through the perineum

The wounds that ooze

Frantic next of kin phone calls

Chuggering wheeze behind a curtain

While on the other side

An out of town niece weeps.

Try to go home but 

The ER is calling again.

The doors never close,

Sickness never sleeps
Blah blah on and on until the end

The living all die, just you wait.

That one you save 

Gets a lovely obituary soon enough.

The stones always roll back down.

But I have no time for boulders.

My weariness precludes the effort.

Awareness of the absurd is not nearly enough.

This is second derivative shit.

I need to be aware of the absurdity

Of my chosen form of distraction.

And that's it.

I carry an old newspaper clipping of 

a young boy’s death

smashed by a car one fine day.

We had tried to save him.

Cut open his little chest.
Feathery pink lungs spilled out

But he died right there in the trauma bay.

There’s nothing ever here.

Good and good and so what.

And so I keep a small 

rounded pebble in my shoe;

formless, blunted, no blood is drawn.

A modest ache, at most,

a dull nuisance,

a query lodged against my sole.

When are you coming back home?

They don’t understand.

There is too much work to be done.

I can't lie down.

I carry this rounded stone

as a gnawing reminder

of the final absurdity.

How could I ever forget?

It’s too late to escape

this particular fate.

So dumb, stone in a shoe.

It throws off my gait

Makes my back ache.
But it works.

And this is the life I choose.

Running away is not an option;

The faster you run

The deeper the stone digs.

The very bone gets bruised.

9/15/19