Mike Eisen

Waiting

I will know, by month’s end, if I am widowed. That’s not so bad. Men are hard to keep track of. Sailors especially, and if drowned in particular. We might wait years, or decades, for news that does not come. And you do have to wait--at least officially--rather gauche to move on, and then, God with his jokes, your beloved comes back. Hardly unheard for the sea to keep men a time. 10 years, 20 years. I wonder at this: Is even the ocean so vast? Perhaps those men wreck somewhere tropical.