His Dilemma Poem by S. R. Lavin

I went for a walk in the twilight along Cascadilla Creek,
as the shadows of darkness and the glimmer from the rushing stream
mingled with my emotions. I like to walk there.

So much of who we are is a mystery of fragmented pieces,
like a do-it-yourself assembly kit, and how the parts fit and connect
is not so easy to understand
and often requires that you follow directions.

This is peculiar to human beings, unlike an elephant or deer,
who do not question what they are or why they do what they do.

You just don’t see elephants sitting in a café discussing their problems.
There is no “higher education” for them. They do not get “degrees”
in elephant knowledge, nor do the deer wonder
why they are not elephants too.
They do not sing woeful ballads and they do not crack jokes.

I crossed the little bridge and ran right into an old friend.
He was on his way to have dinner with his family.
We sat for a time at an outdoor table at a near-by coffee shop.

He shared with me how one year ago to the day
his daughter had died in an early morning car crash,
just one month after giving birth to her first child.

I had little to say that might console him.
All I could really do was listen and hear how his grief
was like a dark canyon where no one wants to be,
where the sun cannot reach
and nothing we do can undo it.

He would gladly relive his two tours in Vietnam to have her back,
wading with his platoon through a jungle swamp
when Charlie opened fire,
cutting his men to pieces,
blood splattering everywhere, on his face, his clothes,
in his mind - that’s real combat,
diagnosed twenty years later as “fatigue.”

But she is gone and he cannot bring her back. And, he does not want
to remember the horrible things he cannot forget.
That’s his dilemma.