death and taxes, and denial?

what endures?

death and taxes:

the only two things guaranteed,

according to popular culture trope,

only change is immortal,

and we mortals have an expiration date 

hidden on us,

but there, just the same,

our stories can obsess themselves

with a protagonist craving to live forever,

a denial of a cloture to our individual ego,

even the meditations I use from a wealth of traditions

promise an eternal life if we but dissolve our individuality

into a sense of self that is the larger Self,

of life itself, of a Self that originates, preserves, and passes on,

then taxes, a reality almost as sure as mortality,

yet American wants to deny that the collective needs our money,

that what we want needs to be paid for,

at least partly by us,

maybe we should add denial

as a primal enduring truth to death and taxes,

as I write these words to understand and capture where we are now,

the world around me reminds me of its enduring truth:

the sun is setting slowly, and the oaks above me

are topped with a vibrant yellow gold,

as blossom and leaf come out,

and the sun celebrates their audacity

with its fleeting enthusiasm of illumination.

by Henry H. Walker

April 2, ‘20