He Died With His Boots On

He Died With His Boots On

As much as we would all like to die
in our beds, surrounded by children’s children,
men reliably go before they are ready.

The consolation of having an end:
that such a life may be cut off
with less tragedy than the fruitless one.

Let us therefore be like a mother in the kitchen,
or every twenty-seven-year-old left-handed guitarist,
and live as if all the world waited wide-eyed
for every small but significant production.

The sin of Onan was to cast life into empty space 
when soil lay there fecund,
demanding.