-- for Keith Ward --
That learned ability to gauge
just what, just how much is at stake.
That sense of how to bring to page
one’s love and readiness, one’s rage
and ache.
That feeling when we’ve done our work
that living well’s a piece of cake.
That love of Dasein’s ownmost quirk.
That shrugging off each lover’s smirk
at our mistake.
That will to flout catastrophe
and reassume, within its wake,
one’s vocalized apostrophe
and never let it atrophy
or turn to mold or break.
That fateful query, “Must it be?” –
the “s” in “must” a hissing snake
insinuating we’ll be free
when masons caulk Eternity
and Gravitas lays down its rake.
That time when we at last renounce
that point we felt obliged to make.
We drop the ball and let it bounce,
then mind our feet that gaily flounce
along the cosmic path of give and take.