Needful

Need you?  No.  Without you I
would carry on living, certainly.  The only thing in nature
stubborner than death is life itself.
I think of the bacteria
that boil colorfully in hot springs, the eyeless fish
that swim in black water at the bottom of
a cave, or the fungus that grows tightly
on the inside of a rock.

The structure of my days, without you in them,
would hardly change at all.  I'd plug along
with a fortitude that I'm sure would make you proud,
and it would be like knowing
that never again would I breathe the scent of moss and pine
on the side of the forested mountain, or walk into
the ocean to be carried by a surge
of swelling sea -

                            or that there would be no heaven
when I die.  From moment to moment there would be
nothing in the world different, nothing different at all.