NaPM April 30, 2018

[dukealien]

Lasting


Sometimes I lie awake (if that’s the word)
and feel and listen to my body breathe
which is impossible, you know, one can’t
perceive one’s breath without controlling it.
(You doubt me? I have heard my rhythmic snores.)

And one gray morning I awoke to find
my breath had stopped, nor was there any pulse
at wrist or neck or even that small vein
beside my eye.  Enough of mind was left
to register surprise, though I did not
reflect that by most standards I had died.
(Oh, my alarm clock woke me— not before
I’d slept again.  No dream or nightmare, then.)

This world’s concluding day was much like that:
its years and seconds simply had run out
and stopped.  A few were conscious of their loss
and pondered on it, timeless, calm, and warm
abed or, if they’d died already, dead.
Then reservoirs of days refilled and rang
suns, planets, men and women up again
not all to life, but reasserting when.

How many times, and will there be a last
of all last days, an end to end all ends?
I greatly doubt that we shall live to see—
and slightly fear we won’t, but still will be.