...We Immortal...

When young, 

I was immortal. 

I simply could not die. 

But, as each day came to pass, 

this quality came to lessen. 

Yes, it’s rather odd 

how the aspect of aging 

saps immortality. 

At the age I am now, 

I am far more mortal 

than immortal. 

Oh, and I should here point out 

that this has less to do with 

the concept of physical aging 

and far more to do 

with the mental. 

There are some who believe 

that immortality 

is inversely proportional 

to maturity. 

That morally mature 

equals maturely mortal. 

Now I don’t think 

one necessarily need be stupid 

to be immortal, but it does help. 

No, I think it’s 

rather a frame of mind… 

An attitude… 

A gut feeling… 

A notion we hold in our youth 

which we somehow lose 

as we pass into old age. 

When I was 16, 

I would cruise in excess of 

one hundred and twenty 

   miles per hour 

on tires rated that of ninety.

It was not stupidity which 

permitted me to cheat death. 

No. I came to accept I could be 

nothing less than immortal. 

Twenty stories high on the 

side of a concrete structure, 

I trusted my weight to a 

length of plastic garden rope. 

Lo but there, a certain 

gravity hung with me, 

but as I pulled myself up 

that straining rope, 

it wasn’t Saint Darwin 

watching over me. 

It was 

immortality. 

And you… 

What makes you 

so different from I? 

Was there not a time 

when you 

were immortal?

Wasn’t there? 

As an infant, there was an occasion 

when you learned to walk. 

Yes, and there was also that moment 

when a revelation struck that 

each fall towards the ground 

   ended in pain. 

As years passed you fell less and less. 

You grew numb to the notion. 

You passed into immortality, 

and yet here with the 

progression of each passing day, 

the notion of the fall 

comes creeping back. 

There comes a time 

when the site of a step ladder 

brings absolute horror. 

Lo, but we are old, 

fragile, and indeed, 

far too mortal.                               

Ó03 Jack David Hubbell