The mayfly dancing on the stream
a single sunlit day
experiences in its hours,
a life no less complete than ours
until the greedy trout devours
and slowly swims away,
whereas the trout that in that day
eats mayflies by the score
lives five or six brief years, then dies;
but who behind the clouding eyes
seeing intelligence denies
it feels what life is for?
And what of you and me, my love,
and all of us, my friends:
does something ponder as we pass,
who are to it as blades of grass
or is what sees us from the glass
where all this business ends?
And what on earth could ending mean
and what might lie beyond?
At times like this a man might wish
to be a mayfly or a fish……