And The Reality Is

it will be a day like any other.
The sun will rise
and the clock will tick one moment into the next
with the smallest of sounds in the emptiest place.

Your bad knee will ache no more, no less
than the day preceding, or the day next.
The garden flowers will still have color
so incrementally fading that unconscious denial is an easy mask
over the fact they are dying along with you.
In fact it feels like everything outside is vibrantly alive
and loud
and big.

People will say "hello"
and you'll fight being incredulous.
Don't they know?
Isn't it obvious to everyone
that the ground is about to open beneath your small, unsteady feet
and you down into the mouth of it
with nothing left on the curb of the earth
but a belch to this monumental thing...
this un-doing.

But you are not un-done
simply unraveled more, and spun
down to the spool
the barest of things
the end of yourself,
and there is nothing wrong with that dear.
From the quiet and stillness of you will grow a sound
and the sound will build note by note
discordant at first
but none the less musical.

Oh that magical day
when you break out into song again.
Sing loud love.
Those notes were hard to come by
and well out of your range
before.