Materialism's ending

We are not the things we carry
We shall pass through this vale
And some will know us by the turn of our faces
But some will know us by the force
Of our actions in commerce
With their lives, the meanderings
And interweavings of the sanguine flow
Of blood, and water and shallow breathing
In and out, in and out
Together, a sweet, sad dance
Forging connection where
Connection did not exist
Yet seemed to be ordained
Like a loss we saw coming
From far away,
But not when or who or where.

Until the dry, red dirt
Upon which we played as children,
Is now covered with the refuse of other children
Or replaced by the schemes and conniving
Of wearying businessmen,
And becomes the clay in which we lie
And the dust to which we evolve.

But the things we did carry fritter away
Into tarnished, tattered brassy bits
Discarded on a pile, like the dust we are.

And we are not the things we carried;
We are the dust which scatters on a September wind,
The shadows tossed to the twilight of Autumn's coming
Trapped in grey concrete conduits like the crisp dying leaves,
We are a last flash of color in the dying light.