16
Death is everywhere, always present. It's not just reported in the daily papers or on the evening news: so-and-so murdered; 15 Iraqis die in a car bombing; plane crash--all 237 aboard dead. On the walk to the mailbox lies a lifeless baby bird while in the yard ants swarm a broken snail shell; on the way to work, a squirrel lies motionless in the road, having fallen as it attempted to make its way across a telephone wire. Down the block an ambulance stops in front of the house belonging to our elderly neighbor. We find out a few days later she was rushed to the hospital but died of congestive heart failure en route. The dentist says that decayed tooth needs to come out. There are ten thousand reminders that death is omnipresent, unavoidable. And, yet we continue on each day as though the path we traverse leads into eternity.

walk after rain
returning worms
to the earth