Axis by Omar Farid. Image Courtesy ArtChowk Gallery
This year the idea of immortality seems foolish
Earlier I suppose it didn’t
A pyramid here, a statue there,
But now why bother?
We might try harder if we couldn’t see our own end
Which is so close
Compared to everything else we’ve measured like
The age of the redwoods or
The distance to Mars
Or if we hadn’t counted and graphed the very number
Of heart beats
Of the average of us
And the death of the world
Which b/t/w we killed
Someday another sentient thing might read this poem
But it won’t be my descendants
Or my reincarnated self
I know
I think
Everything burns
And finally everything goes so cold it lies still
(Even and especially this poem)
Maybe it is time to start believing in something altogether different
A delicate equation perhaps
Or an angle just right
Tilting the marble of the earth off of it
Into the abyss of some divine geometry
~ Heidi McKinley
Heidi McKinley has a BA in journalism and psychology from the University of Iowa. She lives in Cedar Falls, Iowa where she bikes, writes and takes pictures of weird clouds. Her work has appeared in Kawsmouth, Typehouse Literary Magazine, and 2River View.
