invisible, and standing in the rain
and raining raindrops entering each cell
and washing through the molecules
and clearing out old hardened thoughts
and crusty self critiques
and old dustballs of despair
over long-lost and long-forgotten
unrequited longings -
Rain.
— Anonymous
Poems on Passing
BECOMING
Nowhere is it the same place as yesterday.
None of us is the same person as yesterday.
We finally die from the exhaustion of becoming.
This downward cellular jubilance is shared
by the wind, bugs, birds, bears and rivers,
and perhaps the black holes in galactic space
where our souls will all be gathered in an invisible
thimble of antimatter. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.
Yes, trees wear out as the wattles under my chin
grow, the wrinkled hands that tried to strangle
a wife beater in New York City in 1957.
We whirl with the earth, catching our breath
as someone else, our soft brains ill-trained
except to watch ourselves disappear into the distance.
Still, we love to make music of this puzzle.
— Jim Harrison
from Saving Daylight. © Copper Canyon Press, 2006.
