I see some birds and sometimes wonder where they’ll go to die.
I see a mouse and usually think: “Stay in this house and your fate
will be on a tiny plate of chocolate in a mousetrap.
There are lifeless things too, like sand or stones that you find well-heeled
in a field. Or simply things that people drop like coins or rings.
They can’t do or feel, think or speak, write music for brass and strings,
discuss philosophy and scientific things or argue and fuss like most of us.
I like a good song now and then and life-like drawings in pencil and pen.
Writings, paintings and music are forever there, like statues in a village square.
We may die while others live on. Some now are young, then they too are gone.
Our work will survive, product of our heart and furrowed brow.
We’ll not know then, when we’ve gone but we know it now.
So let’s all strive while we’re alive to leave a thought, a picture or sound
telling our kids that, as their skills fade, others as yet hidden, can be found.