Life and Death

Non fui

fui

non sum

non curo

The inscription on the stones of the ancients

as we place the wish to rest in peace

which says in our modern tongue

I was not

I was

I am not

I care not

But a tender thank you

in advance

while I still care

if there be any there who miss me afterward

Mammal hearts can manage a billion beats

before they go quiet

the pygmy shrew spends them fastest

the blue whale spends with thrift

Do any but us fear death

or is it the dying

is it the leaving or the being gone

Christians took their queue from the Greeks

took Hades’ lair and called it hell

they add torment to the fear

to peddle their wares door to door

Those ancients believed it not

so they cared not

their faith was for life

yours for death

Thomas beseeched his father

do not go gentle into that good night

Philosophy was born with the death of Socrates

who died without fear or fight

So is it better to struggle against the end

or to accept

which would better serve the living

who are yet to pay their debt

Shakespeare wondered

in that sleep of death what dreams may come

As for those dreams before death

some give comfort

some give pain

I read one old mother saw her dead husband

waiting at the bottom of the stairs

other sad dreamers fix upon failures and despairs

Let me have joy to distract my senses

Let my eyes see Her smile and my nostrils revive Her smell

let my shoulders sting with the sunburns of my boyhood

let me hear the voices of family

both those here and those gone

and let me taste Grandma’s baloney sandwiches and chocolate milk

I could never make it just as she had

after she was gone

Here’s to dreams of comfort

let the losses in life be forgotten

before that loss of life

Life is a broad thing

or maybe only seems so from certain angles

Long in the living and in suffering

brief when remembered and in pleasure

It is at least fragile

and must be navigated delicately

Handled as gently as an Englishman handles his r’s

Wilde’s Wotton said death and vulgarity

were the only two things we can’t explain away

But it was his advice that sent Dorian toward calamity

Better to borrow the words of Dickinson

the heart asks pleasure first

and then excuse from pain

and then those little anodynes that deaden suffering

Those borrowed words

better than mine

the words I want to write

I can’t find

For a moment I thought I had the perfect verse

but I dropped it as I walked to my pen

It was something about the young

becoming adults only when the dreams of youth yield

compromise — lest the dreamer be broken

The young and the old

misjudge the length of years

only in the middle can you measure true

When the swingset and wheelchair are just as near

Before I was

I wasn’t

when I’m gone

I won’t care

It must be the leaving that bugs me

My cup falleth over