What Matters Most: Poems About Love, Loss, & Trauma

Chapter 1: To Live Forever

I think that writers write
because of a deep anxiety
we feel about the finite
nature of our existence.

This may not be
something conscious
that we recognize,
but we may want to live forever,
in our poems
and stories
or in some way
not fade away
within no one to remember
anything at all
about us.

If this is so,
then I may be
one of those
and now, I'm writing
as fast as I can. 

I write this as a letter,
"To whom it may concern,"
I turn to you, my friends,
family and other relations - 
my readers -
and I ask you,
if anything were to happen to me,
I entrust to you
my words (poems) -
the one's I've written
and the ones I will write.

If anything were to happen to me,
help me please,
to ensure,
that words live,
on,
that should I fade away,
others will have something to say,
something about what I contributed
how I made some contribution -
some impression,
some way that I touched you
and that I lived for something.

It's so easy for things to get lost,
like we ourselves can get lost,
and then what will remain of me?
What do people say of me?
Or what will they say?

It is my greatest fear
and the source of my greatest
despair
that the answer to those questions
would be summed up
in one word,
"Nothing."

I think of these things
not because I think something
will happen soon to me,
but because life may not present
time or opportunity,
to achieve recognition,
and thus,
a sense of meaning or self-actualization,
no matter how many years
I may go on writing.

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This poem was written originally in March of 2009. It is from a certain point of view. I think that for me, self-actualization is through relationships. In fact, the entire point of this book is the epiphany I gained about how it was within a particular relationship and the loss of that relationship that I realized a profound truth. 

Think about those words from Don Henley's song "New York Minute" where he says we should take care of love, cause one day they're here, next day they're gone." Yet, another part of us realizes that everything passes and we can always look to the future. Right? 

Perhaps, the point is that knowing that things are fleeting and transitory, we should not take anything for granted ever and hold onto what we do have for as long as we can.