Sometimes,

I wish I was that deer in the head-lights,

two seconds before that speeding pick-up-truck

crushes my ribs and splinters my spine…

or

that hare, grazing the clover in the growing twilight,

five seconds before that owl’s talons sink into my heart

and I am become supper for her chicks.

They both, suddenly, are aware of danger,

but with no knowledge

of the nature of the dark fate

Death brings.

But I am neither.

For I am a thinking being.

I know there will come a time when I am not.

I am not oblivious of oblivion.

I know what Death means:

a finality, finally come.

Sometimes in a shocking instant.

Sometimes after slow decades of living.

But how-ever-the-less –

It comes.

That great sleep from whence there is no awakening…

Unless.

Unless, perhaps,

by Faith alone,

there is a moment,

after,

when all the lights come on, again.

Perhaps…

Though all empirical evidence

points to the carcus of the buck,

bloody on the road side

or the rabbit too slow to duck,

his bones crowding the owlets in their nest.

And I know how it feels to know this,

that there will come a time when there is no time left.

And my mustard seed is a poor rewinder of my pocket watch.

Does the knowing there comes a moment of knowing nothing

make me a better man?

Or a man caught between moments to decide?

A Scrooge-like-figure on a frigid, snowy night?

My foot prints staggering away

from my redemptionary nightmare’s tomb stone?

Does the great belief in the relief of knowing

that the clock will start ticking,

again,

make me a better soul, now?

I don’t know.

And it gains me nothing to ponder on this,

in angst or hope.

We will see,

the deer, the rabbit and me.

Or not.

And that must be,

for now,

enough.