There waa a time when
news wasn’t news, carried
by mouth, one person
to another a game of telephone
before that concept existed.
Newspapers promised us
the news, but in the time
it took to write and print it,
it was nearly news,
or at worst slightly olds.
Now the world is always
available instantly, but we
know or should, that half
of the time we see only bits
woven into a narrative
that bears no relation
to what actually happened.
At first it was just odd
to think of snow as merely
a concept, a memory softer,
more pleasant than its reality.
You can grow accustomed
to concepts, they are generally
somewhat neat and tidy, easily
filed and brought forth on demand.
The concept of snow has
its great advantages, snowmen
of perfect shape, never melting
and no one must shovel a concept.
But there are moments, a tree
decorated for Christmas, you
want to reach out and feel
the chill suddenly warm your heart.
He awoke this morning to discover his mortality.
This was a concept he had never before
considered, it had never crossed his mind.
He had never been to a funeral, came from
a small family, an only child, his parents
and grandparents still living, not that he
ever saw them, he valued his solitude.
But this morning, while everything was the same,
something was radically different.
He had always recognized the passage of time,
but it was a finite measure backward only,
forward, time was an endless expanse
of possibility and uncertainty, nothing more.
Yet this morning he knew nothing had changed,
but he was mortal, that his time remaining
was not only finite, that was sad enough,
but it was ever so slowly shrinking.
He knew he had to get on with his life, so
he set about his day as though it were any other,
but he couldn’t get the thought of mortality
out of his mind, it was like a smothering shadow
that accompanied his every moment, he focused
on it obsessively even as he stepped off the curb.
When it all ends,
just what will you
being doing
the moment before.
Of course you cannot
know, for you have
no idea just when
it will end. And
if it ends as a result
of your actions,
then you won’t know
that it is your action
that is ending it,
so that is no winner
in this game.
And before you
get lost in thought,
ponder this simple
concept deeply first.
Since I haven’t told you
what it is, you
can’t know even
when it ends.
And by the way
it just did.
an old writer and his words 