When did we decide we needed
a manual for everything, a field guide
to living, tour books piled high
before we leave on a trip,
having meant to read them
and dragging one or two along
to study when we get there?
Ask yourself what you might
have seen in some foreign city
with the time you spent
head buried in a tour guide
learning what someone else
thought was important for you
to see or do, what you might
have stumbled across
just wandering the streets.
The single greatest problem
with dreams is that they
are utterly real when you
are dreaming, the absurd
is not only permitted
but expected, and in that
moment it is hardly absurd.
The dead and living come
and go with impunity,
and you welcome them
as real people because
for that period of time
they are as real as you are.
But awakening, you realize
it was all a dream, and
your life is remarkably
absurd, and it all seems
so utterly frustrating
and wholly unreal.
You could feel the tears
embedded in the email
“We didn’t know
she had only three years.”
She is 84 and failing
in so many small ways
that the prognosis
comes with great pain,
but barely shock
save for its delivery.
So we cherish
the remaining days
and cast the estimate aside.
The hard part
of death and dying
is not
the giving up
or letting go
but the
taking from.
This is why
the living
fear death
while the dead
are fearless.
If you very much want something
you must ask for it clearly, but
if you ask for it, it will be denied to you.
If you do not ask for it, you
may be certain you will not get it
no matter how much you want it.
If you sit and think about this,
you will miss out on living.
It is only when you don’t want it,
when you allow the silence without
question, without need or desire,
that you will discover that you
have had it all along, right beside you.
He is fond of saying
that time is on our side,
although we both know
that time does not take sides,
is incapable of action,
is passive in passage.
It is something of which
we may never have enough,
but we are certain
no one has more than we
in this moment. He
cannot imagine running out
of time, though I know that
I will ,but won’t know
when it finally happens.
an old writer and his words 