This world is small, but I am smaller.
I will coast along the tide;
If I one day find a new world
I will know that I have lied.
Fifty years, no more or less,
Have I surveyed this rolling sea;
Not yet have I found any thing
Still left to do or left to be.
And so I watch, and so I have
For many moonless miles past;
And on I will through briny swill
And hoist the anchors, raise the mast.
You see, this shell does me no good
Until the day that I check out;
By then my carapace will take
A downward spiral down-and-out.
And hopefully
It outlives me
February 15, 2022