We inch forward like slugs or snails,
Slouching toward bug Bethlehem,
Knowing no one finally arrives.
We reach the end, our imagined death
Battering wings against the light,
As if we had suddenly taken flight
And seen the darkness, whole,
Swollen before us, solid night, and
Chose our own lifting into the fire.
We leave all of you behind today, friends,
Family, and others, even enemies who
Would push us into the charnel house
In imagined glee, shoveling our bones over
To correct a dissonance in conversation
We had once, a thousand years ago, when young.
When I die, you die too. The compact was
Written in indissoluble blood, wrist against wrist,
Spit driven into wound, issue of tissue,
Heart spurt so soon dissolving into common talk
That one could have missed the consequence,
The fact of bleeding, the actual dying.
Today, now, is that time. You go off into nothing
With an army swarming around, behind you, countless
Insects who still inch forward, moths and butterflies,
Flying, footed, armed, with voices full of song
Singing of that last inch taken up into the air,
Beating the heartlessness out, flying into light.
