From Writer's Almanac

Judge and I lost someone very close to us recently, and in doing so, it makes one think of death and personal mortality a bit more than usual. This poem reminds me of that obsession, to think of losing ones you love and worrying that we are here but for a moment and so are those close to us. To use a hackneyed phrase, carpe diem.

"Sonnet #64" by Shakespeare. Public domain.

When I have seen by time's fell hand defaced
The rich proud cost of outworn buried age,
When sometime lofty towers I see down razed,
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage,
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the watery main,
Increasing store with loss, and loss with store,
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or state itself confounded to decay,
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,
That time will come and take my love away.
This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears to lose.