Here and there, throughout the day,
I sat with myself, with myself and others.
In a house, in a car, on a bench in the snow,
I kept consciousness together enough
To keep the fiction of I alive a while longer,
Which is all any one of us ever does, whether
Riding into battle roaring, snoring in a pew,
Working on a team like kinfolk, hand in glove, turning
In a lonely cell, or making love. Seated,
Doing as little as I did of any of the above,
I felt like a Byzantine mosaic, like I
Didn't have to turn my head to talk, like I
Could tilt my head, enigmatically,
And signify, automatically. I had a thought
Neither original to me nor to the artistic
Byzantines, but true. And who knows when
Or how any thought first arises? I thought:
It's the body that does the living, the breathing,
The eating and excreting. It's the thought that does
The dying, the me, oh me, oh mying. Further,
You can try to die and fail to die and live
With further dying. But if you're too afraid
To try, you've never lived, were never fully
Living, although you were always dying.
I thought this and thought myself brave until
I thought of my only living daughter crying.
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