Sentience
Is it a blessing or a curse
to know we are born to die?
Should we rejoice, be thankful
for feeling time's blood
passing through our lives,
or do we regret our ever
aging bodies as skin thins
and joints creak like unoiled
hinges on a front door of
an old house soon abandoned?
This knowing, this ever knowing...
why is but one species
out of millions so blessed--
or has it just been burdened,
so heavy with that unending
sense of good, of evil,
permeating each life,
a cognizance honed
by our early sins
and petty wrongs,
those child-born regrets?
And why must we always see
the gap, sometimes a sliver,
but often a chasm between
what is & what should, could be?
Why are we never satisfied?
Why are we never done?
What, or Who gave us this nagging,
incessant, relentless awareness,
and why? For is it not found in every
unhappy involvement... the
failed marriage, an estranged child,
the bitter, lost traitor?
Does it not torment the mind
of the suicide plunging into a river
in a vain attempt to escape this very
personal, unique, most singular 'gift'?
Yet gift it is--
for we are the judging animal,
the weighing animal,
always measuring, asking,
seeking, hungering--
never satisfied....
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