Ask Yourself

At the rate I’m going, steady though it may be, it will take me several years to finish reading all fourteen volumes of Thoreau’s journal. I hope I have those years. But if I don’t, I’m happy to have had those leading up to them. And when I say hope, I mean I’m willing to live them if they’re given me, and that I understand very well they might not be, and that that is a reason for happiness also. Why poison the memory of what I’ve had, and of what I have now, with regret for what I imagine I will not have, especially when the unknown could prove to be even more? As it is, what I have had is also unknown, or at least a guess, or an interpretation, or a dream I have tried in good faith and with partial effectiveness to record. Such is my wealth. What is yours?

Ask Yourself

Imagine
a leaf
that falls
but never
lands,
then ask
yourself
if you
really
want
to live
forever.

Ask yourself: Is it you that is precious, or the gift you bear?

Songs and Letters, August 31, 2006
Another Song I Know, Cosmopsis Books, 2007

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