Buckets Through Time

 

I don’t have a bucket list.

I hardly have any real buckets.

But I don’t have a list of things

I think I need to do before I die.

I’ve never really worried about

a bucket list.

Or dying.

 

I have always joked that my

curse will be to live for an

excruciatingly long time;

outliving my peers, my loves,

my family by long stretches

of time.

And be really, really, really, old.

 

150 years old or older,

a forever curmudgeon,

trying to remember who

did what and when and then

realizing that no one would know

what I was talking about anyway.

“Bucket lists?”  

 

“You had lists for different buckets?”, The kids ask.

“No, no, it was a kick the bucket sort of

thing,” I’d reply in a weak old voice.

“What does kicking a bucket have to do with

being turned into Soylent Green?”

“Oh my science…,” I’d say and wave the

robot person away.

 

I have no desires to finish some

great task like climbing Mt. Everest,

or fighting a llama or smoking Cuban cigars

on the Moon with the ghost of Che Guevara,

none of those things appeal to my sensibilities.

I only hope for peace. For Quiet.

 

I hope the bucket lists of millions of other

people get fulfilled, leaving a memory of

accomplishment and a legacy of intelligent

exploration of the human condition.

Maybe a deep investigation of buckets themselves.

Buckets through time.

 

But for my own “Bucket”,

I hope I filled it while I lived,

in the present, not longing for what it could or should

be filled with. But a full and friendly reminder, tucked away in

a closet, glowing warm with happy memories,

and likely the radiation from WWIII.

 

Hopefully we can share our buckets,

and dip into them often,

never worried about what could have been,

but proudly filled with our contended souls.