Fifty Years From Now

Fifty years from now
I plan to be lost for a while,
grateful for all the lives
I no longer have to live.

My chemistry,
and the salts of my smile
will ripen with the universe
and I will taste, at last,
the raw stuff of the cosmos.

I will see the clarity of darkness
and, like Don Quixote,
I will not spend my time
separating what is real
from what is not,
for there is no difference in our hearts.

Like Santiago, I will row
across the Southern sky.
Orion, bright Sirius
and all the Pleiades
will be my comfort in the night
and Electra my sustenance and my light.

And I will meet Ulysses
on the shore of the Happy Isles
where I will bathe in the warmth of those companions
Circe has undone.

Fifty years from now
I will harden sail against
the solar winds
and dust the planets
with my wake
to gather Queequeg
and Ahab from their
oceanic seclusion.

All will be quiet.
Only the poets
will be given the privilege of voice,
for the essential things
are too invisible for common words to see.

Yet, in an instant,
one half century
will have come and gone,
as an eclipse darkens and blanches
against the light.

I cannot wait.