I came here today to thank you in advance
for all you will do in your lifetimes:
Artworks. Great inventions. Petty crimes.
Marriages. Divorces. Trips to France.
Unless, by fire or floor, or else by chance
the boatman tolls, the bell, unasked-for, chimes—
singular and boundless as all the primes,
a more-than-sum of summed-up circumstance:
you are you; you tell them who you are—
a being born for being, built to be
itself, empowered in the world: the fate
of the atomic remnants of some long-exploded star,
or coconut just fallen from a windwracked tree:
embodied mind; soul’s mortal running mate.