Why Not? Poem by Alyssa Marquardt

I wonder why.
And I wonder...
why not?

Why can't we live to see tomorrow?
Why not live to see things change.
Things are changing everyday.
But that's never enough.

Because
You see,
I'm not one to leave a project unfinished.
I want to see it all.

I simply cannot live with the grass half moed,
With half of a poem.

But why not?

What's the borderline between finished and undone?

The children who walk the streets chanting for peace,
Feel so alive.
They wake up to find another attack on the morning news.
But still they get up and fight.

Why?

Thousands of images
showing that the grass really is greener on the other side.
Hundreds of faces remind them to stop-
But they don't.

Why not?

A man walks the same straight path each day,
Knowing there's no end in sight.
But still he waits
for the light at the end of this tunnel.
And he knows that
the white light of death will creep up before this one comes.
But he never
stops
walking.

January thirty first.
The doctors tell her she has thirty days,
But she plans a trip for June.

Why?