after all these years, you’d think I might have learned a thing or two…
such a fool
what becomes of our memories
when we die? do they simply vanish
with the last flickering spark?
so many years of careful assembly
and rearrangement – why would the gods
invest so much in something so frail?
maybe instead we pass a kind of key
to those we leave behind
so that as long as they remember us,
our life’s collection
of learning and stories, heartbreak and joy,
remains connected, alive, flowing
in waves of what we call wisdom,
what we call beauty, accessible to any and all
with a beating human heart.
as I wander, hands in my pockets,
I absently jingle my enormous ring of keys,
and across the heavens the ancestors
and all of those who went before me,
rejoice at this music, beginning to dance and sing
at the warm pleasure of still being known.
then one by one, they look down at me
and start to laugh, shaking their celestial heads
in wonder, that despite a lifetime afloat
in this ancestral sea of wisdom
I insist on remaining
a complete and utter fool.
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