Finally, Really Out Of Time

When you realize that you may be almost out of time

          Things swim into focus that you know now you never really noticed

The preciousness of the dullest moments you once ignored

          Become quite apparent as you are led off to be rewarded

A series of  last times and silent goodbyes lead to new conclusions

          And things as they are molt into merest memories for you

And though voices call out as you are peeled away

          The path you must take only leads you further and further astray

Then there are those few brief moments so inexplicable and sweet

          And you try to pause within them but they vanish like the dew

And if one finally realizes the very preciousness of the ordinary

          The busy world goes on around, quite unfairly, without a second thought

When at last perched on the brink of that chasm our thoughts can never fill

          Slowly grows an awareness of that awaiting unknown, so dark and so very still

Colors seem somehow brighter, familiar voices ring much more dear

          Though they don’t yet see it as clearly, their time is also very near

There is no more daily rush to nowhere then back again every night

          And now there is this fearful separation from the herd that you must fight

The burden of increasing uselessness grows heavy and confounding

          Food and drink can be tasteless with no real life to surround them

Memories boil up from places far away and all those times that did not last

          It becomes easy to imagine a hidden goodness in the distant past

Opportunities squandered and chances not taken return to haunt

          things you took for granted all those years re-appear just to taunt

Some come to sell you jesus, some come to relieve you of your assets

          The drugs remove your fight but still you lie awake in the night

Chance events from childhood on, strive to weave a full quilt of meaning

          Feverishly your mind keeps seeking some pattern before your leaving

The little ones are brought by to stand in wide-eyed apprehension

          friends and cousins may briefly pause and ask themselves a question

Some perish in a fiery instant, some linger painfully and grow quite bitter

          But many long-held but false assumptions will never even be reconsidered

Some may find great peace in knowing faith alone will see them through

          Others continue to ignore those who pimp religion’s pretty whore

All our lives we comfort in the fact that we always have tomorrow

So it’s quite hard to accept there is no more time to be borrowed

Can I draw from long hours spent praying or squandered in front of TV

          Do I await a re-uniting with those loved ones who left in front of me

Some make wondrous plans for a future others see shrouded in uncertainty

          Faith-based reservations can be made but arrival comes without a guarantee

We can still speak of someday but there are many things that won’t get done

          We can try to forget and to ignore but it will never be again like it was before

It was never supposed to come to this, not for me, in any case

          Dying was like being old, possible only for some other race

My grandma said she would never leave me, but long ago she went away

          I still did not grasp it all, even when mom and dad could not stay

And now as I lay here, so stiff and very still, I see others who have different plans

          To them it is very obvious I cannot escape, but that they most surely will