Diana Darby ** "I V" ** Intravenous

Human Bondage

I want to be free of my own Human Bondage,
the bondage of self and of mind and of body.
The pain in my leg and back and neck.
The dark worry that clouds my brain and fills my dreams with demons
and watercolor mansions that melt on the page.
I feel the hunger for meaning in a meaningless world.
Hours filled with errands and bills and thoughts of tomorrow.
The endless treadmill that has become life,
the one that runs and runs and runs while I struggle to keep ahead.
It used to be enough just to be,
or so I thought,
to sit beneath the trees and watch the leaves fall,
to hear the birds chirp their warning,
to feel the sun bake my toes brown.
Now I am in the middle of life,
my childhood vanished before me.
The fear of wrinkles and old age are ever closer.
I see the aged differently now.
I see them sitting and waiting for death,
in hallways and in wheelchairs,
the light from their eyes growing dimmer.
I see them breathing.
But for what?
Even they do not know.
I see it all slipping away
like the monkey bars I reached for
when I was five.
I want to believe that there is a reason,
that all of this matters,
but each day I grow less sure.