Update Your Priors

No evidence of metabolically active

Recurrent, residual, or metastatic

Disease. And there you were, all set for hospice care.

Oh well, time to work on other complications

Arising from being feckless, old, and breathing,

All the small frailties, all the mounting debits.

You might live to see genuine disaster, yet,

The sinking cities, bombing drones, and rising seas,

The drought’s return, the next, more devastating plague.

You fortunate fool. The government may get you,

Or the anti-government rioters, or both.

You always dreamed you were a kind of no-man’s land,

Little hermit DMZ. It won’t be pirates

From the inside, though, not for a while now at least.