Long drive home after

a difficult diagnosis

You point out substantial brick buildings gone to ruin,
angry they’re left to rot when built to last centuries.
Slow down to shake your head at shattered windows,
at plywood nailed over once-grand doorways.
I remind you reclamation companies
may turn those bricks and beams
into something new. No response.

I muse about carbon atoms recycling endlessly
from the beginning of time. Death and decay
liberate them to become something new. 
What we eat grows in decay,
then dies to feed us.
Death, transformed,
fuels our drive back from the doctor.
Whatever is undoing itself inside you,
inside me, is a response
to atoms seeking to know
what it means to be everything.