Jesse Poem by Tim Larsen

The best things in life happen
slow, and never cease. Like
the way your make peace
with yourself, or the way you grow.
Or the way a young boy
sits next to dad with a rod and a hat.

Likewise, the worst happen fast,
a train of collapse that barrels
head-on like a gust of wind,
coming at the most inopportune moment
to end something so precious,
so fast.

It starts with the message:
“He was killed on the worksite
by a steel beam.”
And then we sit and ponder
what it could possibly mean
if it were actually true.

Then comes the grief,
no moments of relief
no message of hope for
those few slow minutes.
In this short while,
we try to feel what it’s like
to die, all the while holding onto life.

Then come the questions,
To satisfy something else.
What if this? What if that?
What if it hadn’t happened so fast?
We try to blot out the truth,
make it less real, make it reverse.
Reshape, remake, rewrite reality
without pain, without death.

And finally, there comes the acceptance.
And it’s not how we envisioned it, we
don’t expect to one moment realize that
people live, people die, we all cry, and hope
for something better than this life, hope for
something more than gusts of air and steel
beams and aches and tears of grief.

It comes in the form of hope.
The realization that life is beyond these
walls, that life is not this wide and this tall,
sits us back in our seats, and dries our eyes,
and makes us realize
the beauty of it all.