Ephemera

The uncertainty, she moans
with the impressively full
experience of her seventeen years,
is miserable. The self-assured young
woman who scoffs at her grandmother's
quaint but bothersome nudging
concerns and incessant reminders
which have never stopped the dark-haired
scholar from seeking advice from the
grey-haired lover of literature
now laments this waiting game
she incurred by studying which
centres of higher learning offered
the best academic courses in her chosen
field, guaranteeing future employment
and a satisfying life of goals achieved,
meticulously selecting minors and majors,
anxiously making application, unprepared
to live on the tenterhook of aspirations
in limbo. To the granddaughter's sigh
of exasperation, wishing to get on
with life, the grandmother reminds
how hers and her daughter's lives will
be diminished by the absence of the
aspiring scholar, studying far from home,
and they too must submit to a
longer-term agony of expectation.