How Am I? by Matt Bohart

So my lady!
you’ve asked me how I am.
Oh (yawn), I’m fine.
But just as important (perhaps even 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 sparkling bodies of water great and small, fresh, salt
which
one day
will dry up
and leave nothing but a
parched bowl.

The burning sun that burns away the gases that
feed the hungry flames,
the flames we need, the flames that give us burning
Life.

The vast but not infinite universe
that will shrink into a ball 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 heart, wins all the prizes at the dog show,
having given us pleasure and
fascination as it
Grew
and Learned to
Speak to us
in its
Own Way.

The atomic explosion
that split the atom
so that the atom is no more.

And this will happen to
each
of
us…
To me, recuperating wildly—and then,
hopefully later than sooner….

And the therapist? What will happen to her?
Her Life and Being could easily fill
a thousand outsized books, such as the Great
(even it must end)
War and Peace.
And many, many more volumes if the writer were 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?

End of the poem

15 random poems

 

Poetry by subject

Some external links:

The Bat’s Own Poetry Cave 

Talking Writing Monster.

Duckduckgo.com – the alternative in the US

Quant.com – a search engine from France, and also an alternative, at least for Europe

Yandex – the Russian search engine (it’s probably the best search engine for image searches).

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