The sun shines.
When it shines, I love the light.
The stars shine.
When they shine, I love the night.
The rain falls.
When it rains, I love the rain.
Joy and happiness can be found, pure bliss--
Even amidst the most miserable blight.
Pleasure can be found somehow,
To ease the suffering and pain.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Up ahead,
I see a waterfall.
The river I am on is swift.
I have no paddles and I have no way
To guide me to the shore of safety.
I must move forward on my little raft.
I'm heading for the end of all.
I'm heading forward, toward the far, far, farthest fall.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I look up and see the sky.
I wonder why.
I look straight ahead,
And I see my friend, who also soon must die.
Now he also has cancer.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I'm afraid for me, and I grieve for him.
I grieve for myself, and for him I fear.
We've lost our livelihoods, and our prospects are dire and dim.
Soon our health insurance medical care will disappear.
Neither one of us may have another year.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
We only know, that one of us first will go,
And leave the other to face the end,
Without his best friend.
We only know that, much sooner than
Our genetic lifespan,
We will both be cut off: Our future decades are dead.
So many years of life!--cut off--all lost.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I can hear no answer--
No clearly true reply--
To the question Why.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Now I remember the years of life of all my past.
I see ahead a guess-work Question Mark, dark and vast.
What should I do?  What can I do?
A hair divides the deceiving false from the hiding true.
My soul replies:
You cannot tell the truth from all the guesses and all the lies.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
So simply follow time to its inevitable close.
And--on the way--
See every star;
Smell every rose.
Life is a brief gift.
Everything is only for a day.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Try--as the moments fly--
Not to let one moment untasted slip.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The Taker of all these things was also the Giver.
Give thanks and praise
For all your few fleet days.
And hope and pray
That there shall be, bright beyond death's night, 
A new living day.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
When you're on a raft on a river,
Heading for a deep-dropping waterfall--
There's just one good thing about it all that you can do:
Enjoy the trip.

===============


Written by Michael L.P.
aka PoetWithCancer, aka PWC, aka Mr. Poet, aka M.L.P.
(I'm just me)
Written on Saturday, July 31, 2010  11:43 am PST
Copyright (C) 2010 by Michael L.P.  All rights reserved