Given you’re alive now as you read this,
Poor thing, let’s say that death, any death,
Was something you, any you, every you ever
Was, earned. Wouldn’t you point proudly
To all that you’d done to achieve this, just
Before you accepted your just reward? And
What of all the fine and sublime passages,
Large and small (alright, mostly small
For most of us) that intervened between
Your slowly assembling, infant awareness
Of your goal as a beast, your human goal,
And the goal itself, the goal which you, each
And every one of you, has lived, like all of us,
To earn? The swimmer sat on the old,
Disintegrating cedar log, thinking, absurdly,
Of the vanishing, soon-to-be-gone cedars
Of Lebanon, and of Humbaba, their mythical
Guardian. Cedars, too, had lives worth living
And lost them, whether they knew it or not,
Whether they cared or not, whether they fell
Or were cut down or not. And the swimmer
Thought, alone with the waves and logs,
That every cedar conceded the evening was
Hazy and gorgeous as the ax of a dimwitted god.
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