One second, maybe less, to be perceived,
Though often fleeting before it’s received,
Is an awfully short time to live and die,
Though also a thought I tend to deny.
Rather I dream that I can’t always hear
The tick from my watch, the end crawling near.

Grandfather said, You shouldn’t be thinking
Of your time left, not while it’s still shrinking,
And why should I? Young, naïve, incomplete –
I’d better to stand up straight on my feet.
It’s better this way, my eyes clouded.
Yet nothing coheres to a mind always shrouded.

Still, lying in bed, blinds shut, half-past noon.
This day will have died if I don’t act soon,
As I think once more of what Grandfather said,
And a torrent of light flows into my head.
And while it burgeons, this idea, this virus,
My Will fights the instinct to constrict the iris.

Today, I step under a circling sun,
Leaving Phobia, the artifact, upon my shelf.
For even after my thread is all but spun,
With that ticking, those words, I have taught myself:
Mortality is servant to Mentality.
Finality, subordinate to Vitality.