PERSISTENCE

When things don't go my way I mutter to myself,

bang my head against the nearest wall and simulate

suicide by pointing my forefinger to the side of my head.

I get into wallowing, dwelling on my check-list of wrong

choices of the past which no hocus-pocus can rectify:

My business deals that went sour, woman I should have wed,

cushy job I lost, house I never bought and my kids that left

before I got to know them.

I'm just a lost spelunker whose lights grow dim haunted by

finger pointing echoes bouncing off the gloomy tunnels of my cave.

Could I be wrong about myself?

I imagine I'm a spawning salmon swimming against the current,

remembering what I learned at camp:

After I mastered the dead-man's-float and could tread water without

drowning, I crawled with easy breathing, a sleek lapstrake slicing

through foaming swells.

I breast stroked like a Polar Bear about to snag a plumpish seal,

butterflied like a porpoise doing loop-the-loops over white caps

honing in on a smiling mate.

Perhaps its never too late to do a little soft-shoe, sing an Italian aria

or two, discovering I can get back on my horse, move on with all the

finesse and persistence Mrs. Stick-to-it-iv-ness taught me in

the second grade, who never tired of asking: "Why be an old Ford

when you can be a Rolls-Royce?"

Milton P. Ehrlich