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A post shared by Elephant Journal (@elephantjournal) on Jul 7, 2019 at 5:00am PDT

My body just grasped that

my parents are going to die:
a hollow ache that the tour
of the glossy senior living center
With all the bells and whistles
does not take away.

My sister and her husband are also
Downsizing
as we brothers and sisters
drift toward Retirement
and
our own ends.

In a Creation
13.8 billion years old,
physicists recently estimated that
there are two trillion galaxies
and more stars in the universe than
grains of sand on earth!

Scientists speculate that there is one
life-supporting planet
in each galaxy:
two trillion earths???!!!

That’ll give you some perspective
and make you wonder.

This life is a spectacle
that fills me with awe.

And is life worth living,
if we can’t say and do
what is in our souls when
done fairly, thoughtfully?

When strong-hearted,
speaking and acting on our truth,
the heart pounds, the blood surges,
and often spills
in the thorny scrapes we get in—
a life of living dangerously.

~

Want to read more? Mike Chapman’s newly published book, Dancing to Nirvana, is available here.