Entry #72

Of What Gloom Befalls an Impatient Man Reborn
by Victor Monchego, Jr.


1981: As a man my impatience was rewarded. People paid me handsomely. Equal, too, were my skills to intimidate and manipulate. I was, perhaps, the Most Impatient Man of My Time. I lived a slashing, hewing, cleaving world. Great were my feats, eternal fame their meed.

1989: I had clients, not friends. A had a series of erotic relationships with investors. I bore through my enemies with caustic words. I tossed aside many wives. My children pressed upon with the weight of my surname.

1995: Now, each winter I stand before the world denuded, chilled to the core, my sap running thin. I am mad and bound in bark.

1998: Patient, a tree must be patient. One cannot wonder. One must stand. One must wait. Oh, horror. Let me out.

2005: How many summers mark this incarnation? I have lost the ability to count and hence the skill to meter time at consequence.

2013: I have grown accustomed to my bark. I have taken the full moon as my lover. She is gravid and full-bellied. A meadowlark is my counsel.

2017: They say goodly shade she finds who shelters beneath a goodly tree.

2019: I thought my penitence paid, reborn as a tree. But hark the sound, a familiar roar, a buzz saw on the land, the price of impatience. I fear the cutting, the terror of petrol in the wind. The chainsaw rips, tomorrow I am cord.