and what about you?

you're going to die
your children and your grandchildren
and their children
are all going to die
the earth will die
the sun will explode
humankind will perish
everything you know
will be gone

what difference does it make
if you live or if you die
if you work or if you play
who you love
and who loves you back
where you go and what you do
and where you never go
and what you never do?

what difference does any of it make?

what you've been and what you've seen
and what time your clock tells
and whether an hour awaits you
or a day, or a year, or even
an entire lifetime yet?

what difference does any of it make?

what matter your excesses, successes
and failures
your joys or your sorrows
your mercies, your thoughts,
your whispered words
and all your thank yous
and all your goodbyes?

but look closer
and you find the realization
that everything that is, is not
and is, and is not, and is
again and again and again
that with every fall there is a rise
and that we are too small
to see the circle hidden
under the line
that every destination is also a starting point
and every death and birth
is the same

and how do you know
if the earth will not exist again?
and how do you not know
if the stars, the galaxies
the sun and the moon
and you
will not one day be once more
will not sometime
when time exists again
exist as they were
as real and content and wonderful
as you are now?

and though we may not
live forever
how do you know
whether you and I
will not live-and-die
forever?
How do you know
you haven't already read this
and I haven't already written this
and we haven't been destined
to read and write this
without end
on that great wheel
we mistake for an arrow?

and if that's so
is not everything then
of the essence?
is not everything and everyone
of the utmost importance?
does not even
a glance, a pause
a word or a thought
assume upon its shoulders
the weight of eternity?
does not every single breathing moment
become suffused
with the difficult burden
of infinite destiny?

is then everything not
both meaningless and substantial
fleeting and sempiternal
momentary and limitless
mortal and immortal
a joke and a dire consequence
all rolled - and rolling
into one?

and what about you?