Beyond Me - May 18 2025

 

Beyond Me

May 18 2025

In the long run.

Our children grow old

and no one remembers.

Our descendants live

in either utopian bliss

or the hell-hole we’ve left them,

because what story is there

in middling contentment?

While the continents keep drifting

oceans shift

and the planet spins

a tiny bit slower

each passing day.

Or we muddle through

and life goes on,

neither catastrophic

nor futuristic

as the predictors insist.

At least until the sun

devours the earth.

Trouble is

I’m not built for marathons

my body doesn't fit;

the long run

is beyond me

gritty or not.

Middle distance?

Short sprints?

A leisurely stroll?

Or just running in place

at a steady pace

like a hamster on its wheel?

Because it hurts my head

imagining all that might happen

no matter the odds.

Because a mere human mind

cannot comprehend

the vastness of time.

And because foretelling the future

is for charlatans and quacks

posing as seers.

Who know that in the long run

anything's possible,

and who will be left

to prove them wrong?

Ultimately, though

muscles cramp, bones thin,

the body wastes

consuming itself,

and if the brain doesn't fail

it's too confused to finish.

No one wins the race,

but we all run

for as long as we can

just in case.

Economists especially like to talk about the short and medium run: predicting employment, interest rates, and all the usual tedious measurements no one will remember or hold them to. They even presume to opine about the long run. But as the erudite economist John Maynard Keynes famously quipped, “In the long run we’re all dead”; which is the only thing about the distant future one can truly say.

And I would have said it as well, except that I'm very self-conscious how much I write about death. So instead of a 3 line poem — Our children grow old / no one remembers / and everyone’s dead — the last line becomes 9 long stanzas! And even at the end, the word “death” never appears: the concept is only there by implication

As with many poems I’ve written, this one is based on reading a metaphor as if it was meant to read literally, then playing around with both. Which keeps seeming clever to me, but probably isn’t! Perhaps it’s just something I can’t help: I pay too much attention to the nuance of language, the layers, connotations and subtle distinctions. Fun for me, but probably annoying to everyone else!