It is the shortest walk of all that a man can imagine. It is

neither longer nor shorter than an atom which is defined

…as the smallest division of time, and it is so short…

it is indivisible and almost incomprehensible. This is the

time of which it is written: “You will be asked how you

spent all the time that has been given to you.”

---THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING

Why did I not die at birth,

for then I should have lain down

and been quiet?

    I should have lain in the dirt

beside those who fought over it,

   under the ruins built in their name,

while they lamented

       the cities they destroyed and rebuilt,

ash after ash, dust laid to dust.

     I should have lain in the dirt

looking up like the man

    who put a dark cloud between himself and his god,

the better to see him.

     I should have been the woman looking up:

the waters of the sky parting,

     only a few parachutes drifting low,

testing the wind.

    And then the darkness covered the earth.

That was the second cloud.

    She wiped her hands clean.

Her skin came off in her hands.

    Why did I not lie down in the river

with the rest of them?

      Invisible in the cloak of flesh,

I should have been dust

      Lamenting the dust whose daughter I am.

O dust wrapped in wind,

      in the desert I found these words

where they had burned

     and put the ash on my tongue.

            --Debora Greger

Included in the collection, Desert Fathers, Uranium Daughters,by Debora Greger, published by Penguin Books, 1996. Copyright (c) 1996 by Debora Greger.

Used by permission of Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.