My Wife Faces the Cosmos
My wife not being speculative,
I requested her philosophy,
what her thoughts on life and death might be,
and, while she put away a pan, she said,
well, I’ll just bumble around until it’s over.
In her words there was
no maudlin self-pity,
No Invictus posturing,
No angels or devils.
And when I thought of
Plato and his cave,
Kant’s Categorical Imperative,
Emerson’s Over-Soul,
Huxley’s pragmatism,
Sartre’s essence and existence . . .
none of this had for me
the candor, the accuracy,
the succinctness
of bumbling around until it’s over.
(2011)
