That You Aren’t

Something should be going on right now
That you should be observing. But no.
You search around the most recent past,

Which passes for the present, the world
Within reach or at least within reach
Of the senses as the brain interprets,

And you hunt through books you have to hand,
Recent issues of journals, hoping
For something substantive to sink in.

You skim through several conflagrations
Burning online like high-steppe brush fires,
Fast, fierce, brief and scrubby. Nothing much

Going on such that you feel you should
Be observing. You’ve grown squinty-eyed
On approach to the bright light of death,

And, heavens, how you appreciate
Having been granted the long, sure, swoon,
Much as you always craved the lightning.

But there is a strange obligation
Seems to come with this sort of dying—
A something you should be observing.