I wonder at the wonders and muse over the mysteries
And curl up inside of myself
Protecting my vital organs with pills and exercise and doctors' visits
In defense of tomorrow.
I've watched the eras come
Now I watch them go.
Hurried on, pushed on by little things
Like brain gliomas and burst blood vessels
And drugged and defibrillated hearts that can no longer beat.
Breathing ceases, hearing and sight and feelings desappear
The damn lights go out.
Blackness marks the dissolution of involvement and awareness in the passage of time.
Rain will nourish the soil that will blanket me - I won't know it.
The sun will beat down and warm that soil - I won't know it.
But neither will I care.
Freed at last from this pulsing, barely solid, liquid vessel
That I inhabit so desperately
This fragile, aging shell I call my body.
Soon an era will pass
And it will be mine.
