Seconds to Minutes to Hours and Days and Years to Right Now

Looking back on a reckless life,

both shot and stabbed,

hit by a car,

fallen from a third-story window,

bones mending slowly,

feeling life will be as twisted

as the bones and muscle housed by flesh.

But that isn’t what I fear now.

Two marriages, no children of my own.

Sadly, always wanted to be a father;

never happened.

One marriage good,

the other, hell incarnate.

Batting 50/50, not so bad.

Single now, happy, content,

at least I think so.

But none of that I fear now.

Decade after decade rolled by.

When twenty,

you think you will live forever.

When seventy,

you laugh at the things said at twenty.

All that in the middle are lessons learned.

Age is what it is;

we are all born to age,

so death is commonplace;

expected.

None of this I fear.

What do I fear?

At first,

it was my heart attack and five surgeries,

not knowing

if I could walk away

from an antiseptic room on my own,

but when I finally did,

the fear was gone,

for it was not yet my time,

and it made me appreciate

what life brings us.

Now the story unfolds,

and call this a silly fear;

but it could happen, can happen,

and somewhere it did happen.

My greatest fear is to lose two things:

my imagination,

and the hands I use,

to put the words of my imagination to paper.

I have been through much, and survived.

To lose those two things,

is a battle I could never win.

(The photograph is me on my first birthday. I chose this as a connection of the first

and last word of this title. Looking back, even then I had a look

of a person unafraid to question anything.)