-- UNDUE EXPECTATIONS --

John Herlihy

I have learned to live my life without undue expectations,

Pulling on puppet strings with their frivolous temptations.

As a ghost of night, expectations fill the mind with desire,

Roaming sinuous corridors with their tentacles flaming fire.

My childhood friend was expected to be faithful forever;

My loved one, my beloved first love, to betray me never.

We think everything will come if we are only there to wait;

Vague aspirations appear before our eyes as tantalizing bait.

We roam on the track of expectation awaiting the expected;

In never leaving the track, we will never find the unexpected.

Why won’t we leave the beaten path, pursue the unexplored;

We may come across things that are worthy to be explored.

Your promises open the eye of expectation with their trust;

I listen carefully to all your entreaties as I know that I must.

So easy to sing me a song, and even easier to leave it unsung;

Nothing is plainer to me than the vague promises left undone.

I climb the wall of expectation as I often climb the wall of night,

In pursuit of those expectations that I claim as my personal right.

What happens upon reaching the top and not find them there;

I fall down into the deepest well surrounded by endless despair.

I conjure all those delightful expectations as a relish so sweet;

They dance there before my imagination awaiting me to greet.

All those pleasing expectations but a silence with little sound;

At first you hear their noise only to realize nothing all around.

We often go about our day with the expectations of dread;

Only to be waylaid by little surprises and sudden joy instead.

Without any control, we entertain expectations of the worst;

My worries, miseries, fears until my heart is ready to burst.

Our expectations of hope, for example, can be cold at best;

While our feelings of despair fit all too nicely within the rest.

Our happiness lies there in the future, but still fails to appear;

Our sorrows are never expected, yet always they are so near.

My friend has expectations of me that may never come true ,

While I have expectations of him that I never thought I knew.

Our expectations sit the live-long day with patient expectation,

As if they have all the time in the world with their temptation.

Secret expectations can shatter to pieces in the mind’s mirror;

Expectations and fears of the unknown can lead us into terror.

Or worse, they are vague promises that never come to fruition,

Thrown down in the depths of a solitude that feels like sedition.

I endeavor to address people with a view to what they expect;

In that way, they never walk away with undue feelings of regret.

They fall into predictable patterns of response as they participate,

While I await the extraordinary moment that I myself anticipate.

We do suffer the agony of expectation like the agony of hope;

We await disaster to happen as if we are hanging from a rope.

Our expectations nothing but phantom forms to vanish in mist;

Write them down for what they are, then throw away the list.

­ - - - - - ­

(c) John Herlihy 1 November 2019