"On her deathbed"--
and I withdraw
to History's arrogant spire
indecently indifferent
reading these, my life's events
as in a dull book.
Judge not: withhold
your intent to condescend.
We all do this when seeing clearly
what and where we are;
I spread such pains
and subsequent joys throughout
these many memories loved and feared.
Well, that's all imaginary.
When Joe's mother nearly died
Brandon repeated his assessment--
that sounds "exhausting,"
to chorused low-note murmurs
from a surround of dramatic sympathetics.
"I had a friend in high school once
in great shape, got pneumonia
went to the hospital for a month,"
"Oh God, the fungal type will
Kill you,"--suppressed emotions
seeming reproduced from last week's
more exuberant review of sports,
they sound like they are trying to
sound somber, take this seriously.
I decline to comment, shy of my
black philosophy on life's ongoing death,
regarded as one more normal thing we do, like
sex, or birth, or eating, or the toilet.
Nothing Joe wants to hear
right now, nor should.
In the fall I often think of death:
my own, my lover's, my mother's,
my children's (although they are,
as yet unborn, so safe from death)--
to practice grief, which likely will be faked.
I cannot separate the normal
from itself! I expect us all to die
as a condition of our current life
and thus decline to be surprised at its result.
We are leaves upon the tree;
in the autumn
we colorfully descend.
Others shuffle past,
remark demurely on pastels
and forget. Seasons,
and trees, carry on.
october 2012
