OK.
"Adamant."
"Deer browse at sunrise in an apple orchard
while honey locust leaves litter the walk.
A neighbor hears gunshots in the bosque and wonders
who's firing at close range.
I spot bear prints near the Pojoaque River
but see no sign of the reported mountain lion.
As chlorophyll slips into the roots
of a cottonwood and the leaves burst into yellow gold,
I wonder, where's our mortal flare?
You can travel to where the Tigris and Euphrates flow
together and admire the inventions of people living
on floating islands of reeds.
You can travel along an archipelago and hike
among volcanic pools steaming with water and sulfuric acid.
But you can't change the eventual, adamant body.
Though death might not come like a curare-dipped dart blown out
of a tube or slam at you like surf breaking over black lava
rock, it will come--
it will come-- and it unites us--
brother, sister, boxer, spinner--
in this pact while you inscribe a letter with trembling hand."