Someday I Will Breathe

Someday I will breathe
out but not in again,
and those who knew me will gather
in songs of my praise, talk of what
and who I was, but this will lessen
as time passes, and they shall grow
to learn to live with the acceptance
of the lingering pain of my demise.

Then someday they, too, shall breathe
out but not in again, and they will be
gone as will be their memories
of me, and I shall cease to exist
save for perhaps as a genetic gleam
in the eye of some descendent
who cannot leave art alone.

And my poems shall crumble
and blow away to mingle
with the earth and the dust
of a thousand other such dreams,
and they shall settle into the ground
and from them perhaps will spring forth
the growth of another untold poem
to keep eternity in motion...