I look down an ill-defined road,

its contours and extent
obscured by shifting patterns
of light, shade, and chance.
Its downward slope has not
escaped my practiced eye,
and I tread it warily.
I know that as I walk forward
my steps will become more labored,
my body will ignore my wishes more
and more,
that the irreversible law
of return to that
from which I emerged
will assert itself
without mercy.
And yet as I surrender the last
reflections of what I was in the
high summer of life,
my hope is
that I will enter into my true adulthood,
that I will know simple gratitude
more fully than I ever have,
that I will accept the losses
which now must come with something
resemblant of grace,
that I will treasure laughter and
the singing of the trees
with a fervor that belies my age,
that I will finally be able to
forgive and be forgiven,
and that I will know that even
though I never figured out what
all this was,
I never gave up trying to scale
the infinite cliffside.
And if I can have one last request,
(and isn't a condemned man entitled
to at least one?)
it's that when they find me,
I'll have a book
on my lap.