Improv week 7

"Coming to This"

Mark Strand

We have done what we wanted.
We have discarded dreams, preferring the heavy industry
of each other, and we have welcomed grief
and called ruin the impossible habit to break.

And now we are here.
The dinner is ready and we cannot eat.
The meat sits in the white lake of its dish.
The wine waits.

Coming to this
has its rewards: nothing is promised, nothing is taken away.
We have no heart of saving grace,
no place to go, no reason to remain.

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I have finished what I wanted.
I have concealed my ideas, and I have welcomed heartache,
preferring the brouchered look of my backyard in fall.
I located this small piece of you, a word impossible to define.

And now I am here.
Life has become accessible but I still cannot see.
I sit outside on a day extinguished by the sun.
And will wait.

Harboring these thoughts
has its advantage: no things are ever promised, no things are ever missing.
I don't have a reason for this,
no place to go, or even to stay.