So many people want
Life to be sweetness and light—
In fact, saccharine sweet delight.
The eventuality of death repressed
As consciousness sleeps into unconscious;
Care only for affairs here comprises awareness,
Carefully, fearfully forgetful of death’s despair: the buzz-kill.
Others preoccupy themselves with
The eventuality of death and
Dour and gloom diffuse through a joyless disposition, joyless life.
Some say a middle way makes of life what it is
Neither blind nor dark
Enlightened by the happiness we find now, by knowing.
To me meaning is in passionate undertaking,
When in all one takes on the stakes are mortal:
The joy in work, creation, recreation, the music we hear
The clothes or jewelry we wear.
The footfalls we leave behind us, remain in us
Walking into time today; waking in time
David Fekete 