Read Her Life Is On This Table and Other Poems Page 4

  Part 1

  I now will be, and love and plan

  And realize and empathize

  As designs within me rise

  And structures come together

  ’Spite instinct, I am my own man

  I claim the whole world as my prize

  I’ll shape the world to fit my eyes

  It won’t define me, ever

  My slurried thoughts I’ll sluice away

  A moment there and then they’re gone

  I’ll lay my claim to those that stay

  The golden thoughts embedded

  I’ll spend a lifetime learning ways

  To purify the gold I’ve won—

  Then sudden death—oblivion—

  Complete erasure of my days

  And that’s my thought most dreaded.

  Our lives we throw like pottery

  And shape them with own two hands

  And kiln them in our energy

  And cool them with our breath

  We make no show for all to see

  Beside the kiln our life-work stands

  Unregarded, there to be

  Shattered by our death

  But Mozart, Caesar, Genghis Kahn—

  Remembered all and written down—

  Some few escape oblivion,

  And what they’ve done survives

  Yes, some there are still living on

  By works, by art they gain renown

  But these few what the world sluiced from

  A hundred billion lives

  But of the rest, all that is known:

  “This person lived and then they died

  The few who knew them all are gone

  And nothing more remembered”

  Most poetry stays in the home

  Is not packed up to go outside

  Is spoken only when alone

  And then to death surrendered