A.L.S. IV
Being, that strange interlude in time: I am a gnat in a silent
universe, but I have a name and can spell the ugliness and
beauty surrounding me.
Not the stab of the heart's malfunction. Not the noxious spread
of metastatic cells. A lessening -- an erasing of the cords now
climibng up the trellis of my bones.
I am the rain that fell not the cloud, which like my body, after
use, is disappearing. Where my legs refuse to take me, memory
will, to see the haze of years through the transom of time.
Of all the things there is beginning and an end. Our alone it is to
paint inside the frame. In love with the world's radiance, fading
now, neuron by neuron, light by dying light.
So I embrace this last gift of days, in quiet conversation with
eternity. A farewell not made in fear or anger, but in gratitude
its final flickering.