Imagine my delight to find a poem expanding on one of Doc’s favorite phrases: “There’s a lot going on.” It is indeed a lot! Especially lately!
It’s a Lot
by Jon Sands
It’s a lot to open your eyes in the morning,
to taste your own unbrushed mouth, to hear
thousands of voices and believe your own.
It’s a lot to lose even one friend,
to not be heard, or to be heard, and still
be paranoid that people hate you. It’s a lot
to put your heart on another’s train tracks,
to not take a loved one hostage with your own fear,
with what you don’t want to know about yourself.
Once, to explain how cold I’d become,
I confessed my love to a friend who didn’t
love me back. I felt the words leave my chest,
genuine, desperate, gone. It was a lot.
ConEd bills, job applications, small talk.
A lot to shake hands, raise eyebrows, debate
about basketball, eye contact over beer.
It’s a lot to hide behind a new shirt, old jeans,
to grow a beard, or eat a whole pizza,
to practice restraint, or to jog, voluntarily.
It’s a lot to remember a birthday,
let alone purchase a card and mail it,
to love people as imperfect as you are.
It’s a lot to not get your feelings hurt,
to let emotions pass through you,
to see your mother look like your grandmother.
It’s all very necessary, but it’s still a lot—
to say I’ve been good as a mannerism,
to say I haven’t as a fact. It’s a lot,
as well, to include the good things,
to not make a caricature of your sadness,
to only get your jump shot so good, and still
to have it fall left, to attend the dentist. It’s a lot
to be a good husband, an inattentive uncle,
to not know how to respond to an email—
so to say nothing. It’s a lot, maybe the most,
to say nothing. Yes.
To say nothing, and therefore continue
holding that nothing inside you.
That is by far the most.
