It seems old age has filtered in
without so much as fanfare--
rapacious, unforgiving, feeding
on my body everywhere
like those precocious maggots
standing by in ignorance,
their bit of consciousness
still unapprised of my arrangement
with the crematory down the road.
Ah, poor fellows, that you are,
I have no fear as I deny your table
in my final earthen home.
Something I like
of going out with fire...
Something to refine my years of lust,
my trust in paradise
laid down upon my breath,
and then dispatched in breathlessness
at every spasm of creative power
that I released for Adam's glory,
or carnality.
What then, do I bequeath to you?
Not fortune, clearly,
not subjective wisdom
that you must encounter on your own.
To you my hearthside chats with God
are something alien that you would
crumple and consign to flame.
My love? Of course there is no doubt.
No, I pass on to you
that which was given me
within my loins, and yours to be
within that strange eternity
that we address, and tremble
that it lowers upon us all,
beckons like a lorelei,
makes food of fantasy,
and of itself becomes
the towering acumen that we
breathe in the far estate of God.
~
Categories:
unapprised, family,
Form: Free verse