Mindful

The moment that the breath has left the lungs
Is not important. What is that to me?
I know it is the last of Nature's rungs
Running between death and vitality
But I must tell you in all honesty
A living vegetable is not a man.
It is the mind that makes the man that we
Now miss, and I can only count his span
From when the moment was when he began
To think, to when it ended and he fell.
The mind is life. If it no longer can,
And never will again, you cannot tell
Me he was there. Death is the moment when
A mind can't think, and never will again.