And what a bargain it is…

~ Live & Learn

Suppose you found a bargain so incredible
you stood there stunned for a moment
unable to believe that this thing could be
for sale at such a low price: that is what happens
when you are born, and as the years go by
the price goes up and up until, near the end
of your life, it is so high that you lie there
stunned forever.

~ Ron Padgett, “Bargain Hunt” (jacketmagazine.com, April 2005)

Notes:

23 thoughts on “And what a bargain it is…”

  2. I like that one too:

    Coffee Corner

    The large bowls of coffee at breakfast in France,
    the heavy porcelain cups in old American diners,
    the disposable brown plastic cups in motel lobbies,

    the feeling that you ought to drink the entire cup,
    the slight resentment you feel at feeling this way,
    the wondering why you do it then,

    the gratitude for someone’s making the coffee,
    the decision not to have a third free refill,
    the surprise of a really bad cup of coffee,

    the way it used to cost a nickel, then seven cents, then ten,
    and now anywhere from sixty cents to three seventy-five,
    sometimes a little more for decaffeinated,

    the brown print of it drying on the cup’s lip,
    the small amount left in the bottom,
    the rest of it sloshing inside you,

    sending its stimulation through tubes
    in your body, hello, let’s go, we’re late, do
    you have the keys, oh god I can’t find my wallet

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  6. I read this to my father, he cried!

    Then he said, “Our value is high since day one. It’s just that near the end is when we’re really aware of it.”

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  7. One horrendous Holy Sat. night when actively asphyxiating from something respiratory, everything was tried at the clinic and then the hospital but nothing changed my 40% O2 level. My lungs were spasming and no one knew why. As I laid on the sofa that night .. waiting .. I was amazed at the depth of sadness in general to be leaving human life. It is indeed such a gift.

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      1. Oh yes, thank you! I’m sorry — it was many years ago. This post toggled the memory of what amazing sadness there was. I think everyone must feel that way come the (seeming) end.

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