A Serious Situation (Life is)
One could win baseball games
trophies, awards and championships.
One can even win the money game
but no one has ever beaten death.
It was a losing battle
one coming in the form of a
grizzly bear
shark attack
house fire
home invasion
cycling accident
plane crash
heart attack
broken neck from slipping in the bathtub,
a peanut allergy
a mugging
innocent bystander in a bank robbery
choking on his own vomit
suffocating from his own fart
and being eaten alive by house cats
or swallowing a whole octopus.
Seemed pointless to worry about it.
If he was going to fully embrace life
then he’d have to fully embrace dying inevitably.
Drinking fresh snow water
melted from the mountain
reinforced everything pleasant
he’d ever experienced in life:
the musical epiphanies
the road trips, birthdays and sporting events
all paled to the natural phenomena
he’d been lucky enough to witness.
He’d seen shooting stars that were so vivid
that their trails trailed off into the Milky Way’s band.
He could still hear the stream nearby rushing past their campsite.
Alone in his tent
his head on a makeshift pillow,
he fell asleep listening to the dying roar and crackle of the
wood in the campfire.
It was quite possible that his life
couldn’t get better than the one he was already living.
~Edward Austin Robertson
Nuclear Polio Vaccination 