At the boundary of the desert
Beneath the telescopic sky
I stopped to take the world in
As it went on rushing by
I thought ten hundred futures
Of what could and would become
As the dark of night got closer
Slipping disk of orange sun
I thought of all I’d loved and lost:
Of dropped, forgotten things
Of books with unread pages
Broken roots, vestigial wings
I thought of names gone unremembered,
And of places never seen,
Of the last of every species,
Silent forests, noiseless seas
And as dusk made way to nightfall
Black sky pricked with yellow light
I had not moved a single muscle
And so doing lost my life
Because in thinking and not doing
All I did was just compare
What could and would become of
Rather than what was really there