Rambled Eggs [on Life]

I keep saying life is short
'it's the longest thing there is,' she said,
(I don't care where she stole it from)

The thing is, my life doesn't feel
like 'my life,' this,
I don't know what it is, something that's happening.
I feel the past here, sketching it all out sometimes.
My people, haunting me, on the one hand, with their
frank, short lives, full of mothers, city laundry, garlic and heat,
and on the other,
frank, long, smoky lives, overcast days in the bog, the fire---

This life is 'wild and precious,' yes, but does not feel either,
somehow blunted in the way an overused knife is, or a cheap one.
[I meant it when I said I wanted the smoke to fill my lungs,
a warm dark, letting it in, like the ragged coo of a blues song
making its way through your body, it's what happens
when breathing dark feels more natural than air]

Warmth is enough, work so hard
be with the ones you love 'til you can't
anymore, that's how it was. How it is.
And when death comes for them, put on the black,
wait for your day in the sun. Or maybe just drink and drink,
and remember.  Who is to say whether or not we should