Nineteen Minutes to Bedtime

Jack just had a big fight with his son Zach about it. He said

I'm tired of hearing how you're too tired to do your homework. You're

not too tired to play basketball or Xbox. That was that after Zach said

Whatever.

               Visiting the nursing home you think Never

will I allow myself to live long enough to end like that, that's

a fact. But promises are broken all the time, to others and the self,

and that one probably will be too unless your face is shattered

into shards of broken glass, by accident.

                                                         Then it will be quiet, too quiet.

Day by day goes by until the day you receive news of your disease,

personal, unique, irrevocable, musical and factual, withal.

That's that you think but in fact it's not. You discover (circle with a dot) dying's

much like living. That that's true until the body just stops barking, breathing.

Forever.

            Salvation in the details (sub-atomic particles). Granite

or sandstone, ash or oak, Odysseus or King Lear. Get it? Not yet.

For someone who doesn't want to be anonymous, Jack's anonymity runs deep.

His work sunk in a tar pit or peat. The worthwhile effort is to meditate on that,

accept and repeat.