Hope From Mortality Poem by Thomas Ware

Going back to old haunts:
Liberating, but odd:
Your favorite shops are no longer here,
The fertile ground of memory now lies sere.

The old neighborhood,
Strolling along the streets,
What's left? Is it good?
The changes? Seems like a cheat.
Can't understand why they are all gone:
Can't understand when they've been here so long.
Don't others enjoy this, as much as you?
Isn't memory's sake enough to not bid adieu?
I expected changes, but not this,
Not this destruction of my home, stop it!

Maybe your anger stems from deeper,
You'll never go back. Why linger?
Because that past represents opportunity lost;
Because maybe next my friends'll be shot.
Maybe I am next: my life fleeting.
Maybe the world will forget, time speeding,
Maybe all happy days have an end.
Maybe that last piece of mail will go unsent.
Maybe our secrets die alone;
Maybe later my house is somebody's home.

But not mine,
No possession lasts all time,
My claim on the world, gone,
And we're expected to say all's fine?
Fear sets in, like a fever,
Your eyes widen,
Breath grows short, try to breathe in,
Can't, panic, at the awful realization:
Nothing is final, even this premonition.

Even facts change,
Distorted through spacetime,
Truth is more strange,
Than fiction, that's fine.
If nothing comes to eternity,
Can't that mean,
Eventually things change, and will,
Stasis from insanity?
Maybe one day,
In the distant future,
Some scientist will say,
'No more sutures,
No more surgery, sickness, disease,
We've discovered the secret, trust me,
We'll never have to fear again.'
With great change comes the end to all ends:
Given infinite time,
Infinity happens,
And the infinite comes about again.