Why are you always so serious?

I tend to be an overly serious person, with a dry sense of humor that is bitter and acrid.  I was a serious, quite child too, probably with more of a sense of reality than was really good for me.

This week, this month, I look at my nature, my life so far and think to myself, "Well if I must be so damn serious, I should at least do it with a sense of purpose and solemn reverence. 

I hear my heartbeat, a march,
processing through time. 
Step two, three, four,
moving upward, moving onward,
into the future and over the horizon. 
 The dawn rises again,
and shines in my eyes.

We sweat, we cry, we bleed. 
We breath, we gasp, we yowl.

I tend the flame, and pull the weeds. 
I carry the burden of a heart vessel
spilling full of water. 

And today, I sit and keep time, silently with the earth. 
The stars turn somewhere in their obscurity. 

I reach up. 
I root down. 
The center is still,
and everything thing else buzzes around.