December 28, 2021

this is not the end

though I find myself at the cutting board, so attentive to the carrots I’m slicing, it looks
like I’m betting my life on it, and who knows, maybe I am. Maybe when I take to the sled
on the first run on the golf course slope, I’m fusing my body to gravity, committing 
its lumpy topography to memory, and maybe when I hold my wife’s hand,
I’m telling her, in no uncertain terms, that I am the happiest I could ever hope to be,
and even right now, looking out into the gray morning, my eyes travel to a house
with purple siding, and a yellow school bus, and a blue trampoline in someone’s 
backyard, and if these are the last things I see before the lights go out, I will consider 
it a win. But then I hear the dishwasher running, and see the rise and fall of my chest,
and there is more to say, and whatever I thought was over is, in fact, only just beginning.