Timing's a funny thing.
It seems I always stroll into a persons' life,
exactly when I'm most useful.
Just a stranger who pops in,
straightens up the place a bit,
then leaves.
Rarely though,
is my timing ever to my own benefit.
Too late, too early,
doesn't matter.
I can only hope that perhaps one day,
I'll find myself somewhere I'm meant to stay.

Two thousand four hundred and fifty five days
spent floating the vacuum of space.

My lungs ache with misplaced distaste
for the beautiful sights surrounding me.

I used to add them all up in romantic displays
but my math of late just ain't what it used to be.

Obtuse angles of obtrusive angels portray
ninety degrees of too little, too late.

Pensive, on her dead gazing, I heard the Mother of All,
Desperate, on the torn bodies, on the forms covering the battle-fields gazing;
(As the last gun ceased—but the scent of the powder-smoke linger’d;)
As she call’d to her earth with mournful voice while she stalk’d:
Absorb them well, O my earth, she cried—I charge you, lose not my sons! lose not an atom;
And you streams, absorb them well, taking their dear blood;
And you local spots, and you airs that swim above lightly,
And all you essences of soil and growth—and you, my rivers’ depths;
And you, mountain sides—and the woods where my dear children’s blood, trickling, redden’d;
And you trees, down in your roots, to bequeath to all future trees,
My dead absorb—my young men’s beautiful bodies absorb—and their precious, precious, precious blood;
Which holding in trust for me, faithfully back again give me, many a year hence,
In unseen essence and odor of surface and grass, centuries hence;
In blowing airs from the fields, back again give me my darlings—give my immortal heroes;
Exhale me them centuries hence—breathe me their breath—let not an atom be lost;
O years and graves! O air and soil! O my dead, an aroma sweet!
Exhale them perennial, sweet death, years, centuries hence.