The Barn Door (Leblang)

What is a perfect morning today, in the pandemic?

I wake groggy, disoriented, nowhere to go/nothing to do, full of ennui.

Do I even know what that word means? Am I using it correctly?

I don’t know though I’m a writer, and wrote a book no one will ever read--

Launched in a pandemic.

I toss and turn throughout the night

Sucking air, grappling with my pillow

Fighting demons who evaporate by morning

Leaving footprints, invisible weights on my chest.

I am shiftless, longing, hungry for distraction

Me and I are not getting along

I want to change the station, change my mood, change my story

Go back and rewrite my past—revise, refine, reflect.

Could I, like Robert Frost, go back to that fall morning

Two pathways in a yellow wood

And take the path I didn’t choose then

Knowing what I know now?

They say that hindsight is 20/20

In this year 2020 I want another chance

For intimacy, touch, relationship – a boyfriend

But at 63, in the Age of Corona

I think my horse has left the barn

And it is left to me only

To

close

the

barn door.

June 2020

Judah Leblang's new memoir Echoes of Jerry is now available at Porter Square Books in Cambridge and on Amazon.com. Find out more at judahleblang.com.