If You Had Fifty Days To Live

If you had fifty days to live
With sudden end, no time to grieve,
What would you do with time that’s left
So on departure not bereft?

That’s seven weeks plus one day more
Like Omar counted each year more –
Those days when barley seed was sown
Till ripened grain was brought back home.

Passover seed to Pentecost
First fruits new crop to God was brought
With thanks for each new crop year given
A gift for people under heaven.

So what for me, Omar days hence
Of my new life, what recompense?
First fruits of my life – what to bring
That thanks to God I then could sing?

What could I sow here on day one
To start these Omar days begun?
Some act, some word, some leavening bright
Which brought to fruit retreats the night.

A photograph? Made one a day
Which spoke each word a graphic way
To intersperse in poem book
Then Lulu placed for all to look?

Then what if I each year did that
That’s seven fifties working flat
With fifteen days each end of year
To rest a while, my mind to clear.

That’s seven projects done each year
A focused task each Omar clear
Such limits to my project brought
Might help to focus all my thought.

To pictures on day six of course
Lets me take Sabbath no remorse,
Eight hours photography each day
Sustaining life His given way.

What goes into each Omar next
Is open wide with each context
Three months, a quarter, maximum
Till cancer-free day then has come –

Is all I can of future see
So seven weeks fits easily
Within that span with time to laugh
If walls of life then inward crash.

It resonates ‘another plan’
Not come from God, more from this man,
But one first round from this day on
Makes life concrete, less dance and song.

Then see how things look from that point
Like if to stay, or blow this joint
An Omar just of time misspent
Is small enough to circumvent.

So what of this first Omar’s time
“Get organized, with wife of mine,
Two weeks help on construction site
Clean up the mess and orchestrate.

So one book up on Lulu site
Not perfect but a draft that might
The Lulu processes make clear
Experiential learning mere.

If I do more than that this time
I’ll happy be and base laid fine;
If time permits, some poetry
Laid out with first photography.

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