Poem Containing One Thing You Didn't Already Know Michael Mark (bio) Only life is shorter than life. The shortest day of the year - longer than life. That slipon the ice took your ass longer to land than life. Loveat first sight takes twice as long. To make himself feel taller he compares himself to life. Life is like life, only shorter. Life – just now – you feel it? Got shorter. Ask the Great Basin Bristlecone Pine (Pinus longaeva) of the American Westthat's been measured to be 5,065 years old. Ask an Immortal Jelly Fish (Turritopsis dohrnii), who, before dying of old age, startsagain as a baby. It can do this forever. Dying, even suddenly, is longer than life. Put side by side with death, life almost never happened. [End Page 27] Michael Mark Michael Mark is the author of Visiting Her in Queens is More Enlightening than a Month in a Monastery in Tibet, which won the 2022 Rattle Chapbook Prize. His recent poems appear in The Best American Poetry blog, Copper Nickel, Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest, Sixth Finch, The Southern Review, The Sun, 32 Poems. Find him online at michaeljmark.com.
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Michael L. Mark (2024) studied this question.