They’re not so much precious,
these last days, as they are
fleeting.

You’re eating a pizza,
or learning to drive a car,
choosing what to make of a
future,

Or preoccupied with worry
about the news:

a revolution somewhere you never heard of,
a dead president, a moon landing,
a war that smoldered by,
then blew into a wildfire,
the irony of wearing fatigues
to a peace march you drove to.

Of happiness beyond imagining
or of misery just as deep,

of companions long gone,
of those who stayed for life
and died.

You might be thinking
about a career you found yourself in
years later, of making do,
of trying vainly to retrace
a path you thought you never took.

Suddenly you remember cleaning out your desk, filling boxes
with tools and dreams alike.

It’s Monday and you don’t feel well,
and you happen to catch a reflection
in the mirror, someone you thought you knew.