Fifty Years From Now

I plan to be lost for a while,grateful for all the livesI no longer have to live.

My chemistry,and the salts of my smilewill ripen with the universeand I will taste, at last,the raw stuff of the cosmos.

I will see the clarity of darknessand, like Don Quixote,I will not spend my timeseparating what is realfrom what is not,for there is no difference in our hearts.

Like Santiago, I will rowacross the Southern sky.Orion, bright Siriusand all the Pleiadeswill be my comfort in the nightand Electra my sustenance and my light.

And I will meet Ulysseson the shore of the Happy Isleswhere I will bathe in the warmth of those companionsCirce has undone.

Fifty years from nowI will harden sail againstthe solar windsand dust the planetswith my waketo gather Queequegand Ahab from theiroceanic seclusion.

All will be quiet.Only the poetswill be given the privilege of voice,for the essential thingsare too invisible for common words to see.

Yet, in an instant,one half centurywill have come and gone,as an eclipse darkens and blanchesagainst the light.

I cannot wait.