Now all the weary steps that seemed the last
Stretch out behind me, and the bitter dust
Is driving in the wind til it has massed
To cover up the trail, as need it must.

Past every hill that seemed important then,
And dared me as I scrabbled in the scree,
They now are small and faint at edge of ken,
And only mock me in my memory.

And gray as well are hopes from my beginning,
For naught has turned the way that I had planned.
I am a man more won against than winning,
And wrote my tales upon the drifting sand.

Beneath me all the strata bear the bones,
The history of life as writ in Braille.
What journey I have left is to the stones,
From here on in, the dirt may tell the tale.

For all the eons fallen form a shell
About our world, and life has made it clear.
In truth, the Earth has little time to tell
Between a mayfly and a biosphere.