UCLA Journal of Radiation Oncology Fall and Winter 2022 - Flipbook - Page 19
Going It Alone
The secret of a good old age is simply
an honorable pact with solitude.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Not just for the metaphorical hell of it
but instead, here and now, for good reason,
while peering into this macro-lens
windshield, I think of Amelia’s
Lockheed Electra, of Dick Hugo’s Buick
Skylark, of everything falling
inevitably through the surrealistic
filter of cumulonimbus—heavy
weather swirling into focus
as first my father, then my mother,
slipped into their final silences. I,
with no sane way out of this
mortal storm, this viscid
mythological maze of biblical
ebb and flow, have come to see
why I never again will thrive
as once I thrived in the same
exact triangular time
with Mom and Dad. Thus, alone,
I embrace the wild
disorder, the metamorphosis, this life
sentence amidst the faithful. No longer
just one more fading pin-tip
blip upon the radar screens
of the gods, I, in solo flight,
am swallowed into the welcoming blackgarmented arms of the dark, far
beyond the blurred
purgatorial borders between
heaven and earth—my cargo of light
grown brighter, pulsing with all
the hope, all the fear,
one disappearing soul can hold.
-Paul Zarzyski
Paul Zarzyski, “Going It Alone” from Going It Alone
Available on Amazon
Copyright © 2022 by Paul Zarzyski
Reprinted by permission of Paul Zarzyski
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