Belief In Human Immortality - Sam Doctors

[Larry Robinson]

Belief In Human Immortality

Belief, in a kind of certainty may be all that keeps us sane,
yet we know our houses are built on fragile cliffs,
erected on fragile yellowing limestone rock and scree,
bit by bit by bit, year by year by year,
winter storms and summer’s desiccating droughts
will undermine our man-made foundations,
our fragile existence to be taken in due course,
sometimes with ample warning, 
sometimes on apparent whim just as a sudden gust
snaps a tree branch on the aged oak, or on the ancient maple;
or when a fire engulfs mountain and town
sparing little we thought of as permanent,
sparing little we were sure was there to stay,
sparing little of the world we knew.

In the fullness of time there is an inevitability to an ending,
even our minor solar system at the edge of the Milky Way
will devour itself and be engulfed by our minor star, as our sun
becomes a swollen white dwarf no longer able to sustain life,
even our one universe itself, all its barely countable planets,
all its hundreds of billions of stars 
all its tens of billions of galaxies
and all the miscellaneous almost innumerable debris
all left over from what we have called our beginning, ‘the big bang’,
will in eons hence flee apart and become dark and inert.

Still we persevere in the firm belief 
in our eternal being, our time without end,
yet as surely as our one universe expands exponentially
to end inert near absolute zero and in total darkness,
so too will we sapiens end in darkness
near absolute zero and become inert,	
still we live on and on for a time still undefined,
for a time finite, for a time that must end,
immortality a human myth, a foible of our species,
maybe useful for its time, expedient for the moment,
serving a purpose for the day to day, to day,
sustaining us for a time uncertain,
sustaining us till no longer possible,
maybe our belief can help us through life’s difficulties,
maybe gratitude for all that has been given us nourishes us,
maybe our belief in truth and beauty can sustain us,
maybe belief in community is what there is.


	- Sam Doctors