every moment a miracle

mortality as a gift   

for half a century
I have felt mortality
as someone close
who can call on me any time,

I have felt life as a gift that we only borrow,
and, when we return it,
others will go about their lives just fine,
often with little sense of a repo man
 ready to repossess their own hours upon the world,

I hope,
I plan,
and I know that I barely get it,
that sense that what we have,
while we still have it,
is as much miracle every moment
as we can ever hope to know.

by Henry H. Walker
October 12, ’12