Inchworm

“Who kept on going down a road

When it was clear the way was doomed?”

Who? Anyone living, that’s who,

Any life aware of being

A life hosting an awareness

Huddled in the skull, dreaming doom.

Every life aware of living

Might as well be the last one left,

And will be for that awareness.

Have some sympathy for the lives

That carry this burden with them,

This fragile knick-knack of thinking,

Of having the words to think with,

And all the ghosts that come with them

Of previous lives left thinking.

Life is the road; living’s its doom.

Awareness is a passenger,

Antic, burrowing in the fur

Of what it thinks might be itself,

Of what it thinks is a monster,

But is only a stretch of road

Rearing up and hurling its length 

Repeatedly over the earth,

Just a bit longer, bit further. . .