BEING HUMAN

We humans like to think that we matter, that the space we occupy would be empty without us and that somehow our lives have special significance but, ultimately, we’re all transients: mere straws in the wind.
Time eats us up, one and all, the just and the unjust.
Like pebbles cast into water, we barely make a splash and within moments the ripples have ceased. 
Likewise, as we blunder through the world, Time swiftly erases our footprints. 
This is as it should be. Nature is served. The earth will outlive mankind. 

PASSAGE

In afternoon silence
a grasshopper sings
then stops 
when my boots stamp a warning
but galleon clouds,
drift unconcerned, unchallenged;
trees, at the meadow’s edge,
shed not one leaf
and daisies resurrect themselves
behind my crass, departing heels.