Arbitrator

 Life or death
good and bad
pendulum swings
arcing wide
and so judgmentally
we arbitrate
Plowing through
the drifts of our days
deciding
parting reality into
left and right
this way and that
defining
sorting
naming
categorizing
and faulting.

Seems a bit of a curse
perhaps,
says I,
Who has no one else
to blame.

Soap Bubbles

I'm probably the only one at this moment
who is thinking of Ernie.
Of the 7 billion humans who awake to see this day
I am the one;
The perpetuator
The bearer of memories
The transmitter of genes.

It is said that after you are dead
you live on in the memories
and the mind wanderings of those who loved you
-A kind and selfish hope-
as all of us will surely follow him.
But in a generation or two
these ties will wear thin
Stretched, with the elastic that draws us
growing weaker and slacked
And then finally
...snap...

So then perhaps we are truly free
of all that has bound us to our life,
Our human form, such a temporary state:
We are soap bubbles rising
straining to exist
then at last
failing and fading and finally
invisible to the eye and mind and heart,
but never truly gone.