Plastic Bags, Swelling Stars, Petroleum, and Dying Friends
This world,
this world that we are consuming
will someday be consumed,
the last feast planned for-and-by
our own Sun,
we are to be swallowed as it bloats.
Earth’s poles will flip
and there are meteors to consider,
super-volcanoes, solar storms,
tectonic shifts—
perhaps an event that disrupts
our planet’s rotational inertia?
All, with a little time, will prove inevitable.
One is as certain as the other.
Why live?
Why care?
Why try?—
when a violent end is a foregone conclusion
and so much larger than anything we could influence
or comprehend?
A man once spent months
caring for a dear friend—
his friend was dying
the illness was terminal and well advanced
There was nothing to be done
no medicine could be given
and death was coming soon.
The man did not stop washing
his friend’s sheets or making his bed,
he did not stop helping his friend
to the toilet
he did not stop cleaning
his friend’s sunken body
He did not lose interest in
preparing his meals or vacuuming
the floors
He did not cease to laugh
or share stories
he did not stop simple things
with his friend
like watching TV.
He did not look away when the pain was severe,
or when they were both embarrassed.
He did not scare from uttering the words,
“My friend is going to die.”
He did not avoid witnessing
his friend’s last breath.
His work was not for sympathy’s sake,
nor guilt’s,
he did not work for futility’s sake,
he did not try to change what he couldn’t.
His actions were not rendered meaningless
when his friend did not wake.
He had worked for something enduring,
something known but unknowable
something he could point at
but could not name.
His care had been ceremony,
his patience a ritual
his fear a blessing
Through his friend’s death
he learned that in one life lived another,
that we neither live nor die
through a single point.
When he pressed his hand
to his friend’s chest
for one final time,
so did he raise a hand
to his own.
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