I'm Full Of Self-doubt. I Doubt Everything

We Carry The Dead With Us Only Until We Die Too, And Then It Is We Who Are Borne Along For A Little While, And Then Our Bearers In Their Turn Drop, And So On Into The Unimaginable Generations.

Enormous Morning, Ponderous, Meticulous; Gray Light Streaking Each Bare Branch, Each Single Twig, Along One Side, Making Another Tree, Of Glassy Veins.

Yes, This Is What I Thought Adulthood Would Be, A Kind Of Long Indian Summer, A State Of Tranquility, Of Calm Incuriousness, With Nothing Left Of The Barely Bearable Raw Immediacy Of Childhood, All The Things Solved That Had Puzzled Me When I Was Small, All Mysteries Settled, All Questions Answered, And The Moments Dripping Away, Unnoticed Almost, Drip By Golden Drip, Toward The Final, Almost Unnoticed, Quietus.

What I Was Afraid Of Was My Own Grief, The Weight Of It, The Ineluctable Corrosive Force Of It, And The Stark Awareness I Had Of Being, For The First Time In My Life, Entirely Alone, A Crusoe Shipwrecked And Stranded In The Limitless Wastes Of A Boundless And Indifferent Ocean.

How Flat All Sounds Are At The Seaside, Flat And Yet Emphatic, Like The Sound Of Gunshots Heard At A Distance.