#228: December 7, 2006

I don't feel like the earth is getting small
as I get older--rather, it expands;
countries spread out like age spots on my hands,
and now I know I'll never see them all.

The seas get deeper, mountains raise their heads
impassable between the sky and me,
and all the paths of possibility
are closed off, one for every moment fled;

And one day soon the world will grow so wide
I'll be immobile in the face of it;
my final hours will pass by as I sit
and watch the ground race out to either side;

I feel it in the thickness of the air:
the growing distance between here and there.