run with the hunted

my doom smiles at me 

there’s no other way:
8 or ten poems a
night.
in the sink
behind me are dishes
that haven’t been
washed in 2
weeks.
the sheets need
changing
and the bed is
unmade.
half the lights are
burned-out here.
it gets darker
and darker
(I have replacement
bulbs but can’t get them
out of their cardboard
wrapper.) Despite my
dirty shorts in the
bathtub
and the rest of my dirty
laundry on the
bedroom floor,
they haven’t
come for me yet
with their badges and their rules and their
numb ears. oh, them
and their caprice!
like the fox
I run with the hunted and
if I’m not the happiest
man on earth I’m surely the
luckiest man
alive.

by Charles Bukowski, from the book The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain.

 I love this eloquent description of the feeling that you have so much to do before your time runs out, but still feeling so full of happiness and luck. 

The poet wrote this as he fought the cancer that eventually took his life. Bukowski wrote masses of poetry over the course of his life, and many reviewers say the best of his work came during this time.

art: Woodcut of Fox from AllPosters.com