How Am I?

So Maryel!
you’ve asked how I am.
Oh (yawn), I’m fine.
But, just as importantly (perhaps more),
How is our friend Life feeling about life,
these days?
         
Forgive the audacity,
but I think I know.
Life has kindly let me see
the tragedy inscribed
in All of it.
—the gently swaying, slowly aging trees.

The animals jumping for joy in their untutored ignorance of a
clock.

The bodies of water, great
and small
turning dry and leaving
nothing but parched bowls

The burning sun
burning away the fuel
feeding the flames we need,
the flames that give us burning life.

The vast (but not infinite) universe,
shrinking to the size of
a child's marble,
so dense,
so heavy,
even God won't have the strength
to lift it.

The death of God, Himself,
as the Great
Furious
Philosopher 
proclaimed. 

The rise and decline of loved ones,
dying only when we forget,
or when we, too, 
must leave. 

The passing of an
extraordinarily
ordinary
pet,
who, in our hearts only,
takes First Prize...
having given us pleasure
and fascination
as it Grew
and learned to
Speak to us
in its Own
Way.

The atomic explosion that splits the atom
so that the atom is no more—.




And this
will happen
to each 
of us.

—to me,
recuperating wildly—
and, then—
(rather later than sooner....)


But, before this happens,
what will happen?
Your Life and
Being could
easily fill
a thousand outsized books,
such as the great
War and Peace
and many, many more
volumes,
were the writer just capable of breathing
on 
and on, and
onward.




The inscription of
Tragedy Everywhere,
so easy and simple to see,
if one just looks. 

So I’m (yawn) fine,

How are you?