Will I leave my breath 
     or will my breath leave me?

Will the sandbar open up
     and swallow me one day
     when all I meant to do
     was sink my toes in a few inches
     —for balance—
     to feel the ebb and flow
     nudge me
     —graciously—
     as if I were merely a reed?

Will the herons continue to bless me
     by ignoring me
     unless I breach their personal space?

Will the Tony Onley landscape 
     of pale blue Gulf Island mountains 
     forever stay out of reach just so? 
     Ever just so?

Will the green canopy of Lynn Valley headwaters 
     protect me from the autumn rain? 
     And does protection at all entail 
     keeping me wholly dry?

Will a sufficient number of people
     continue to stay away from the Sun Yat-sen Gardens 
     on summer weekday lunch hours 
     to keep from crowding me? 
     Or is this the wrong spirit to adopt?

Is the Tabasco sauce left on my table 
     when I arrived at the bar
     an invitation
     to live more of an overwhelming life, 
     or to abandon my hesitancy to buy anything hotter than “medium” Que Pasa salsa
     or to just—I don’t know—steal it, you know?

Will my breath take, some day, 
     a cosmic cue 
     to sprout wings on my [arbitrary?] final exhale 
     so that all those billions and billions of molecules 
     can spend decades traveling the planet, dispersing, 
     so that one day, 
     all people living 
     will inhale a molecule of me? 
     Or, will I, some arbitrary day,
     wake up, 
     ride my bike down to Vanier Park in the chilly winter wind, 
     step down the boulders facing the Maritime Museum marina, 
     sit leaning against a large cold granite stone, 
     then BE no longer NEEDing my breath, 
     so that days later, 
     dozens of friends and relatives board the Queen of Whatever’s-Up-Next, 
     travel towards Schwartz Bay, 
     meet on the stern deck in the drizzle, 
     ponder a moment of silence 
     before watching someone who’s pitched at least in the minor leagues, 
     heave my ash urn, 
     not haphazardly, mind you, 
     but with charmed gusto 
     into Active Pass 
     under the distant, pensive eyes 
     of the bald eagles 
     perched in stillness 
     in the treetops 
     on the northern tip of Mayne Island?

Will I leave my breath 
     or will my breath leave me? 

Copyright 2002, Stephen Buckley
07.24.02 [Backstage Lounge, the Tabasco sauce really happened.]