This morning I had an experience that I thought might lead to my death. I still ache, a lot, which for me is saying something as I have a high tolerance for pain, but it is better. But for some time I could neither breathe nor speak. Luckily my wife was there to help me.
Whether I was really dying or not I cannot say. But it felt like it, the most I’ve felt like it in years and years and years. This wasn’t just pain, it was the bite of mortality. I am pretty sure now it is something mechanical, not organ-related, like a heart attack. Nevertheless it was tremendously painful. I had to take pain killers (that should show you something right there when it comes to me) and sleep. When I got up about 1:30 both my mortality and my youth were fresh on my mind.
So I wrote this.
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WHEN FRESH WE ARE
When fresh we are and happily made
No misplaced hope may yet dismay
The whole bright world is but our star
The Other Side not very far
Our breath is sweet, our wonder wide
Our hapless faith our ceaseless pride
All scent is sharp, all sights are bright
The days are clear, full moons at night
No pain is long, all sounds are songs
Two rights for every minor wrong
Countless friends, the lands are vast
Adventures first and labors last
Death is but a whispered dream
Ghost tales are told but never seen
The grave is but some plot of earth
Freshly plowed to sprout new birth
When happily made and new in form
Our limbs are smooth, our face unworn
Our breath is deep, we run for joy
Our very lives our favorite toy
No Frontier is too great to cross
No day of travel ever lost
No place so old it is not new
No final shore to bid adieu
No man has ever proved his no
Anguish is a word unknown
No thought to ever count the cost
No markers dark engraved with loss
God still walks in every field
No sickness ever goes unhealed
No injury will linger hard
To cripple you with small regard
Your thirst is deep, you hunger much
You quickly calm with but a touch
Tomorrow is another day
To prove yourself in reckless play
Blood is but the sap of cuts
You laugh at it, ignored as such
You’ve never seen a man bled dry
You’ve never wept and never cried
When newly made and happ’ly all
You know not then what will befall
Though give it time my little friend
The world is ripe with brutal sins
It is not right, it is not just
In better things we all should trust
Yet mortal man’s a mortal thing
And with him comes the end he brings…
Wyrdwend 