Maybe It’s Easier When You Haven’t Lived

The gurney rolls down the hall,
Time for surgery at last,
After a week of waiting

For the correct specialist
To return from vacation.
A drab January day,

Neither cold, thaw, snow, nor rain,
Just clouds outside the windows.
The man on the gurney thinks,

Just two weeks ago he was
With friends and his new lover
Enjoying sex and drinking,

Good food and camaraderie
In New Orleans’ French Quarter,
On his own vacation, and

Now this. He stares at the clouds
Motionless, apparently,
As they roll him down the hall

And he has another thought
That he’s quite ready to die,
As long as it’s while under.

Years after, he will wonder,
Why the hell he thought that thought,
Back when he’d done nothing, yet?