The Death of a Fly
For most of us (if I can presume to speak for mankind),
We wear out our lives
Almost before we can even get started (or so it seems).
How is it that mortality is so short-lived,
The quintessence of evanescence,
Relative to the span of planets, persistence of solar existence?
Just yesterday morning,
My eyes focused on the presence of a black housefly
Lying, innocuosly, on its back,
And I asked myself, with unphilosophic prescience,
What force, fate, agency might have directed that insect
To my apartment's floor, to finish its last, frenetic seconds.
So small was it, in its unpestiferous brittleness,
I all but missed it, missed the difference it made,
Until, contemplating, comprehending its brief being,
I realized death, be it a planet's, a star's, a fly's, or my own,
Whenever it comes, comes too soon,
Leaves, in its wake, an utterly replaceable insignificance.
11/15/08 - (1)
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