Past Too Late

Betsy Joseph

October 11, 2022

      The breaking of so great a thing

      should make a greater crack.                      

                         William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra

Twelve years past too late

the holding pattern wearies, wobbling

from the inertia of postponement.

Not now, they would think.

With two holidays soon approaching,

easier just to go through the motions.

Two months later, they acknowledge

certainly not now, for it would cast

a definite pall on a family member’s birthday.

Surely better timing ahead.

Twelve years past too late

and another anniversary looms ahead.

Not now, they would tiredly agree,

musing on the obvious awkwardness 

it would impose upon themselves—

not to mention an announcement 

that would bear sadness all around.

But when then?

they would whisper deep into the night,

both feeling the toll exerted on each of them,

feeling almost guilty, thinking surely

they should feel a crack greater than exhaustion

as twelve years past too late

now slips too easily into thirteen,

and one automatically asks the other

what they should have for breakfast

as dawn finally arrives in a stupor of indifference.

Betsy Joseph lives in Dallas and has poems that have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies. She is the author of two poetry books published by Lamar University Literary Press: Only So Many Autumns (2019) and most recently, Relatively Speaking (2022), a collaborative collection with her brother, poet Chip Dameron. In addition, she and her husband, photographer Bruce Jordan, have produced two books, Benches and Lighthouses, which pair her haiku with his black and white photography.