Why, oh Why
By John Herlihy

I
Why?
He wanted to ask everyone;
But he couldn’t even ask himself.
Life poses a multitude of questions
That eventually narrow down to only one,
A question that has no clear answer,
Its mystery can spread like a cancer.
Why, oh why? It makes you want to cry,
Things happens without rhyme or reason,
Even a poem has its own season.
Why do terrible things happen
That make our round world flatten.
Why do we think we know,
When we just end up stubbing our toe.

II
Why can’t I just up and fly away,
Into the other side of another day.
Why can’t I just let things happen,
Making their way like fingers tappin’.
Everything I see looks strange to me,
Like a time in the future I will never see.
I am a stranger lost in an unfamiliar land,
I wish I could just bury my head in the sand.
When I look into the future, I hear a simple question,
Pretending to be only the ghost of a suggestion,
That awakens the faces of sleeping children,
Fallen down to earth from their home in Heaven.
It’s the question on our lips that truly matters,
The wrong answer would leave us alone and in tatters.