On the highway slick with rain,

a tuft of fur lies in the cold,

once lively and once living bold,

now past its life and past its pain.

As a child I wondered why

such manifestly smashed and dead

that bit of fur could not be said

to be composite still and cry

aloud for resurrection new

and frolic once again alive

since all the flesh could still survive

and moving life might still accrue.

And then with age I saw the fact

that reassembling that poor thing

cannot be done with anything

but with some unimaginable act.

There are the molecules, the breath

awaiting reconnection there,

but no hand of science or of care,

can make a life from what is death.

No longer will it run and dart

across the fields and in the trees,

no matter what gods there are to please,

nor any painter of its art.

I wonder if my childish mind

was seeking what I call today

the thought of immortality

as something there to find?

Or was it merely youthful dream

that substance, once it’s put in place,

remains the same, its essence chaste,

though not for me what it may seem?

I find that now the deeds we leave,

like fragments on the rain soaked street,

are all that we bequeath complete,

not flesh, but what we can conceive