To live is not counting each breath Or even noting the time it takes to breathe Living is doing, creating, exploring and manufacturing Living is being in the moment with what you are doing Living is never knowing when you will die Never seeing a sure end Any forty-eight hours can be significant Moments in one’s life. Moments of proposals Moments of sacraments, of discovery Of learning, forgetting, remembering and re-learnig The last forty-eight hours can be hours of passion Of love-making, or of making one last attempt to do the thing you never had the courage to do The last nanoseconds can be of apathy Like the many bits of boredom that wasted much of life To live is not counting each breath Or even noting the time it takes to breathe Living is doing, creating, exploring and manufacturing Living is being in the moment with what you are doing
* Inspired by Reverend Dr. William Barber’s quote in the New Yorker, April 10, 2020 “If you knew you had only forty-eight hours of breath left, what kind of world would you use that breath to fight for? What kind of world, what kind of nation?”