Nineteen Minutes To Bedtime Poem by Robert Ronnow

Jack just had a big fight with his son Zach about it. He
      said
I'm tired of hearing how you're too tired to do your
      homework. You're
not too tired to play basketball or Xbox. That was that
      after Zach said
Whatever.

Visiting the nursing home you think Never
will I allow myself to live long enough to end like that,
      that's
a fact. But promises are broken all the time, to others
      and the self,
and that one probably will be too unless your face is
      shattered
into shards of broken glass, by accident.
Then it will be quiet, too quiet.

Day by day goes by until the day you receive news of
      your disease,
personal, unique, irrevocable, musical and factual,
      withal.
That's that you think but in fact it's not. You discover
      (circle with a dot) dying's
much like living. That that's true until the body just stops
      barking, breathing.
Whatever.

Salvation in the details (sub-atomic particles) . Granite
or sandstone, ash or oak, Odysseus or King Lear. Get
      it? Not yet.
For someone who doesn't want to be anonymous,
      Jack's anonymity runs deep.
His work sunk in a tar pit or peat. The worthwhile effort
      is to meditate
on that, accept and repeat.

Like a flat spun nickel, shiny sunny side down,
shadowy silvery moon up.