The last good thing
I will ever do
will be done on a Thursday,
in summer or perhaps
late spring;
it won’t be a weekend gesture,
or one made at the beginning
of a workweek, compelled
by pressure and dread;
it won’t be an autumn deed,
drawn from me by dead drifting leaves,
or a winter’s impulse urged out of me
by too much grey and white.
No, the last good thing I will ever do
will happen when I finally tell myself the truth
in the middle of the week
on a warm green day
and admit I have not done nearly enough
to deserve my
existence.
Once I say it,
I will kick off my sneakers
and walk barefoot on the hot road
from where I am then
to as far away from there as I can go,
but none of these things are the last good thing I’ll do.
No.
The last good thing I do will be when
I look back at all of you, the whole village, and refuse to
wave. Better still: the last good thing I do
will be to not look back at all.
The last good thing I do will be a sin of omission.
A man who never
did a thing
will become an object lesson,
and for years after they’ll say,
the only thing
he ever really did
was fuck up a perfectly great summer Thursday
for the rest of us.
Why
do you suppose he did it? Guess we’ll
never really know.
Something like this, though,
it makes you love
the ones around you even
more. Makes you appreciate things.
I guess
some good came of it,
after all.
Dark Matter 