Hidden In Possibility

What if it were - all of it - already over and I, an agonized witness to events winding down, were trapped in a permanent past tense? Would lamentation and celebration alternate, as if our situation, ever ambiguous, would always be in flux, never stable? What then should I do with my patience? At whose feet should I lay my tenderness? I am confused by my own imaginings of things still hidden in possibility. I will rehearse a thousand roles in exile, and wait for a summons to return to the stage. (Oh, patience rewarded!) Once there, before those expectant faces, turned upward at me, I would play out Jacques's Seven Ages, or assume the murderer's role in Hamlet's GONZAGO, getting off scot-free because he's nameless. No! I do not want a staged life, swamped in another's consequences, bound to another's view of Fate. I worship the largest forces of the universe. But the sublest signs of Love arouse my tenderness. Perhaps those I might have loved, had they given me an answering gesture, will wind back into my life on the Wheel of Time. I may even leap onto it in a frenzied moment. Or merely reach out and seize a single flower for its beauty as the Wheel tumbles on.