In a rain forest on the Alaskan panhandle, a fallen Sitka Spruce centuries in age, dwarfed only by its redwood cousin, can take as long to decompose as it did to grow.  This seems to be how it is with empires, too.  And people.  For a human begins to die as soon as she is born.  Only nascent, as an unhatched being, is his physical form given the promise of forever.  And yet only a second does this world persist.  Even the fallen spruce, from seed back to soil, endures but an instant within the instant of the world’s winking span.

© 2015 by Michael C. Just