My Last Poem

Will my last poem be something simple, like taking a final breath, or will I have time to write something longer, say an epic--for truly every life ever lived has been an epic: full of courage and cowardice, heartbreak and newborn love, things found and things lost. It takes guts to live-- bad people doing bad things, mother nature turning on us, giving blue sky in the morning and a tornado in the evening to suck up life. For 100,000 years 10,000 ills plagued us, wrecking our bodies, often killing us like swatted flies. In the end, everyone is murdered. Hard, hard life is-- still, we love it at its best, when, like a pleasant dream, life brings happiness, hope. So I offer this as my last felt poem, more a prayer really: forgive us, keep us, and lead us all home.... (final draft written 8/27/15)