The Smartest Person I Ever Knew

Sat beside me long enough to be noticed,

flurtingly,

and then birded away

kicking gravel and shards of dirty detritus

and away in flight in history no more

died dead crashed, even lying for a time on the surface,

and then beneath the all-receiving earth,

of the earth again, that cinder

that features its atoms time after time.

All! Writhes the brief soul,

not in just the unacceptable instantaneous mortality of oneself,

that bit of the vast map assigned incidentally to you,

but in all the echoing song of your kin and kind. 

____________________________________________________

by Jim Strope

2009