On The Ingestion Of Cannabis

To ingest cannabis when life
is apparently free of obligation
is to examine the word “obligation”
as it it were a spear pointed at your time.

Some of us can stand there
in front of the spear,
see it coming clearly,
then duck away with little consequence.

Others simply
catch the spear in both hands
before it can wound,
and fulfill what’s been thrust upon them.

I am neither.
I am of a different group,
those who will automatically step
from the spear’s merely projected path

unless they fear that they can not
avoid it — and if
they can not avoid it,
they do not partake.

This may feel like
trivial information
to you. If so you do not see
in this one small fact

how much of a life
may be ruled by a sense of
obligation as
unavoidable danger

and of even
potential pleasure
as a place
of near-certain death.